


gold does not glitter

by ShadowAccio6181



Series: Makoto no Monogatari (ORIGINAL, WILL BE DELETED SOON) [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Friendship, Humor, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slice of Life, Worldbuilding, because kishimoto's worldbuilding is confusing, mainly the fillers, what's with the fillers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:55:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28483509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowAccio6181/pseuds/ShadowAccio6181
Summary: Here in the Village Hidden in the Leaves, I am given a second chance to finally live. It might be just a dream, but... I love everything about this world. I love my family, my friends... and the world itself. I want to see everything, learn everything. I want tolive. Maybe that's why I get so annoyed when circumstances try to ruin that.This is my story.
Series: Makoto no Monogatari (ORIGINAL, WILL BE DELETED SOON) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/972150
Comments: 19
Kudos: 115
Collections: A Collection of Beloved Inserts, Best Fics From Across The Multiverse, Japanese Approved





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

_Over the wide sea_

_Towards its many distant isles_

_My ship sets sail._

_Will the fishing boats thronged here_

_Proclaim my journey to the world?_

* * *

Life isn’t fair, it seems. Some people are born lucky. Others… aren’t.

There’s no one to tell you which category you fall into. That’s something you have to decide for yourself. For me… 

I’d like to think I’m one of the lucky ones.

I’m not sure when everything started, or how everything changed. My memories of the transition are buried somewhere, hidden in that sort of lazy languor that transcends the passing of time. 

Perhaps my first concrete memory was the smell of tea—that’s what the shop always smelled like. 

Maybe it was the golden afternoon sunlight that filtered through rippled leaves or shone on polished wood.

It could have been the rustling of leaves, or the chatter of birds. 

Or soft fabric against my skin. 

It might have been the smiling orange eyes and black hair that streaked grey at the temples— _Otō-san_. Or the warm brown eyes framed by shiny dark-brown hair— _Okaa-san_ —that flicked with movement and felt so smooth when I fell into the temptation and grabbed for it. 

...or, it might have been shocking white lights and cold surfaces and rough fabric that felt so uncomfortable I couldn’t help but cry.

Yeah. That might have been it. 

* * *

Still hiccuping from the scare, I curled up again in _Okaa-san_ ’s warm embrace, clutching tightly at the collar of her dress. It was a nice fabric—maybe silk, or something like that—and I wanted to feel guilty for wrinkling it, but I was so _confused_.

Where was I?

The pretty-brown-hair— _Okaa-san,_ I corrected myself, that was what she seemed to call herself—was familiar, achingly so, even if I couldn’t figure out why. 

A hand reached out to pat me on the head, and I nuzzled into it for a moment before stopping myself. I blinked, trying to get the blurs in my vision to resolve themselves into something I could better understand.

The hand was— _Otō-san_ —the man with the black hair and grey-streaked temples and tanned skin and the brightest orange eyes. He was also familiar, in a sense of _warmcomfortsafe_ that I didn’t feel up to untangling just yet.

Unfamiliar words washed over my head, even as I grounded myself with the soft fabric and warm embrace and rough palm stroking itself over my head.

The soft, rhythmic sounds—more stilted than the English I was used to—somehow also seemed familiar. 

Not because I’d become accustomed to it, but in a way that seemed to make me think of… of… of _Before._ Before the fog of warm comfort and sleepiness. Before _this_.

I frowned, trying to think past the haze in my mind. 

I recognized this language, but where—it was Japanese. That was an answer, but it only raised more questions. Why was I here? How was I here? No matter how comfortable and familiar it felt, there was a nagging sense of disconnect. 

But thinking was tiring.

Why didn’t I—yes, sleep sounded nice. 

_Okaa-san_ was already carrying me, so all I had to do… was… 

* * *

The traumatizing experience repeated itself. Many times. 

I managed some form of coherence in my thoughts after the last visit, but it never lasted long—and it took conscious, often-unsuccessful efforts to actually leave that soft, warm languor that seemed to occupy most of my time. 

The place I spent most of my time was nice and comfortable and smelled like tea and felt like soft fabrics and seemed to consist of warm wood and soft sunlight.

There were also the places with rustling leaves and chirping birds and dappled sunlight and occasionally brisk breezes, but my blurry vision meant I couldn’t make out much beyond that. Trying to look too hard kept giving me a headache, and my head felt heavy enough that my neck would hurt whenever I tried to look around for too long. 

The solution was usually going back to sleep. 

Walking—or, rather, being carried by _Okaa-san_ or _Otō-san_ —between the places meant passing through busier areas with more people, all chattering loudly in that new language. It means blotches of bright colours and strange smells that made me want to sneeze and bury my face into the shoulder of whoever was carrying me. 

I would have much preferred just staying in the _softwarmwoodandtea_ place, but even the overwhelming sensorial experience of being carried around was much preferable to the cold, bright place, where I started getting poked and prodded by… presumably someone—or multiple someones—in the most _ridiculous_ outfits. 

Or, at least, what I assumed to be ridiculous outfits. I only really managed to see their faces—from when they bent down to look closer at me—but from what I saw, they looked rather like cream-coloured teletubbies. 

They all wore a tight-fitting, cowl-like thing over their head that completely covered their hair and left only their faces showing. It was sometimes cream-coloured, sometimes grey. Sometimes, they also wore what also looked like grey headphones. Sometimes, they were also wearing a poofy, cream-coloured hat—something that seemed a mix between a chef’s hat and a beret. They also had a large, cream-coloured jacket, with a stiff raised collar that loosely encircled their neck and something circular and red on one side of their chests—presumably a symbol, but I really couldn’t tell. 

Honestly, if they didn’t look so absurd, they might have been terrifying. As it were, however, I was still quite intimidated. Oh, they were gentle with how they checked my eyes and ears and throat and how they lifted me up to listen to my heart and lungs and how they rotated my arms and legs as they presumably checked for mobility. 

But then, one of them did something and their hands started _glowing_.

I scrambled to get away, little chubby arms and legs swinging frantically in the air. I almost managed to turn over before they picked me up with those still-glowing hands and—the glowy-stuff was comfortable. Or, it made the hands comfortable, I guess? 

If it weren’t for how bright the lights were and how cold the room was, I might have even been lulled to sleep—or at least, back into my standard comfortable indolence. Instead, as things stood, I was still _miserable_ every time I had to visit. Admittedly, I usually didn’t leave quite as distressed—the glowy-thingy did a lot to calm me down. However, I still would have much preferred being able to stay comfortably at home. 

* * *

I think I quite like my parents. I mean, I liked them before—they’re warm, comfortable, gentle, and attentive—but I think they managed to set things up so that I sometimes don’t have to go to the _coldbrightsterile_ place. 

I actually didn’t realize at first. I thought it was just a person visiting me—admittedly, I hadn’t seen them before, but they seemed to be on pretty good terms with Okaa-san, and Okaa-san and Otō-san allowed them to hold me, so they definitely weren’t a stranger. I think this was the first non-weirdly-dressed person my parents allowed to hold me.

I really liked her! She smelled a bit like the shop—a slightly bitter, tea-like herbal smell, only a little sharper and maybe more bitter—and had really long, shiny black hair that she let me play with it. Her voice was surprisingly deep, and slightly raspy—even deeper than Otō-san’s, it sometimes seemed—but it meant that I really loved having her carry me because of how I could feel the vibrations when she occasionally laughed. Also, the way she spoke was really different from everyone else—I don’t know why, but it was really soothing,

I like her more when I realized that she could also do the glowy-hands thing. Her glow also felt comforting. It was slightly different from the other people’s glows, but I couldn’t quite describe why—the closest I came was that it seemed ‘smoother,’ and even then, my description felt inadequate. 

I wasn’t sure if I liked this glow more than the other glows, but the comfortable setting combined with the comfortable glowy-thing and the fact—realized later—that her visits meant I could go longer without going to the _coldbrightsterile_ place ended up placing this new person solidly on my list of favorite people, even as my appreciation of my parents increased.

She visited a few more times before one visit occurred differently.

I’d woken up… somewhere else. That place was nicer than the _coldbrightsterile_ place, but it was pretty cold there, too, even if I had the comfort of a blanket and the glowy-hands and the faint smell of bitter-herbs. It might have been my imagination, but it felt like we had traveled to higher altitudes. There was a crisp feel to the air that might have been the cold, but I couldn’t help but wonder if we were on a mountain or something. 

There was a woman with grey hair who also sounded pretty old—she was a little intimidating at first, but she was nice enough, I guess? She must have been _Obaa-san_ —she seemed to repeat that word a lot while speaking at me. 

But no matter how nice she was, I couldn’t help but feel that it was weird how there was no Okaa-san or Otō-san.

Still, I trusted Okaa-san and her choice of friends—and I also trusted _silkyhairandbitterherbs_ —so I just snuggled closer and waited to see what would happen.

The answer?

Nothing much. I was taken inside to a place that also had warm, polished wood, but smelled more like forests and fresh flowers, instead. I refused to let go of _silkyhairandbitterherbs_ , so they ended up being the one to dress me in white clothes, swaddle me with another warm blanket, then drape me in something bright red.

We seemed to climb higher—stairs, I’m guessing—under cold grey skies that faded to darker grey-green blurs all around me, until there was a splotch of brown—a wood archway?—that seemed to be overlaid with bright red in some places. 

Then, it was level ground until I was carried into somewhere with darker, rougher non-shiny wood that smelled of incense and but darker and rougher, and someone chanting in a weird voice, and I honestly don’t remember much seeing as I was trying to quell my faint anxiety at being fully swaddled. I’m not really claustrophobic, but I really don’t enjoy having my motions constrained. And my fears were brought to life when _silkyhairandbitterherbs_ handed me over to _maybe-Obaa-san_ and she took me and _started walking away_. 

I wailed, desperately trying to wriggle free of my cloth swaddling, 

_Maybe-Obaa-san_ seemed to laugh and tighten her arms and then _bent over_ and so I screamed harder, even as I stopped wiggling in fear that she’d put me down. 

But no, she just straightened up and… oh, she’s bowing?

I stopped crying. 

She bowed three times in total, said something, and then—as I stiffened—stepped back and handed me over to _silkyhairandbitterherbs_. 

I’d managed to loosen the swaddle enough to reach out an arm and tangle it in the silky hair, trying anxiously to anchor myself. _Silkyhairandbitterherbs_ laughed, a deep, smooth sound that I could feel vibrate through my bones, and I could also feel them step forward, bow once, and then turn and carry me out of the _incenseandwood_ place, hands already glowing comfortingly.

* * *

The next time I woke up, after that, I was back at _softwarmwoodandtea_ , hand still tangled in silky black hair, but carried by someone else—Otō-san—even as Okaa-san fluttered about in front of me, trying to… 

Oh, whoops.

I let my fingers go slack, and the tightly-clenched hair slid loose. 

I reached my arms in the direction of _silkyhairandbitterherbs_ , and I heard them laugh again, but they only let my hands closer around their fingers. 

I tried voicing my discontent, but they just patted me on the head, hands momentarily lighting up with that familiar soothing glow, before they pulled away. 

I tried reaching out again, only for Otō-san to shush me, turning and walking around in an effort to lull me back into compliance. I only grumbled a few times before subsiding—I wanted _silkyhairandbitterherbs_ to stay, but I supposed Okaa-san and Otō-san made an acceptable substitute.

Okaa-san soon returned, and Otō-san carried me to a table that—ooh, smelled pretty nice! 

I’ve smelled food many times, and it has always been annoying how I could only savor the smells. This time… 

I perked up as a spoon made its way towards my mouth, and I almost _lunged_ for it, but Okaa-san pulled the spoon away at the last moment.

A pair of blurry chopsticks entered my vision with something clenched at the tip, and I swung my head over, mouth already open… only for it to pull away, too.

The pattern continued, and I ended up in a sulk, staring grumpily at the multi-coloured blurs I _knew_ to represent food and ignoring my parents mock-attempts to wave food in my face. I wanted _teeth_ , and I wanted them _now_. 

* * *

Unfortunately, I did still sometimes have to go back to the not-teletubbies. On the positive side, though, I ended up alternating between some of my favorites during my visits—probably thanks again to Otō-san and Okaa-san. 

There was one with dark brown-black eyes and a rounder face who smiled easily and often took the time to play with me. There was another, with green eyes and a square-ish, stern face. He was serious and almost brusk, but also meant that my visits with him were the shortest. 

The third was someone I was actually scared of at first—he looked gaunt, with large, dark markings on the upper left and right sides of his face that covered his eyes and then drooped down, making him look even gloomier. His enormous, round eyes were also entirely grey—no pupils, no irises, and even the whites of his eyes seemed to blend in. Everything was grey. 

However, he was also very gentle and patient with me, and he was really polite with Okaa-san and Otō-san. 

Oh, and his glowy-thing was really warm, even compared to the other glowy-things. So, that may or may not have played a role in endearing him to me.

It was also ironically the not-teletubbies that helped me locate myself, once my vision cleared up enough.

So, I had already had a strong suspicion that I was somewhere different. The language, the smells, the buildings, even the people seemed to indicate that I was somewhere foreign from what I was used to _Before_. I couldn’t exactly see clearly enough to pinpoint anything, but even large blurry blotches of colour gave me clues. 

For one, Otō-san’s eyes were a vivid orange that part of me thought should seem strange, even unnatural. This wasn’t even that odd. Okaa-san’s friend, the nice long-haired one that smelled of bitter herbs, had really pale skin that looked white—the shadows around her eyes looked purple. She also had eyes that were a yellow-ochre colour. 

Even looking around while Otō-san or Okaa-san carried me helped me realize—a lot of people had hair of all colours, mainly ranging from a darker blonde to a warm light-brown to dull orange-browns to darker browns and blacks, but there seemed to be other hair colours as well. For another, the fashions seemed more simplistic—what looked like just short-sleeved shirts and long-sleeved shirts and either long pants or pants that stopped at the calf. And they were usually in darker-toned, more muted earthy colours. Everything seemed standardized. 

For another… the glowy hands. While I accepted it quickly enough and I currently absolutely _adore_ the glowy-hands, there was a part of me that kept on repeating that _the hands shouldn’t have been glowing_.

So, when my vision cleared up enough for me to realize that Otō-san had faint crows-feet around his eyes when he smiled, it meant I could also see that on the not-teletubbies’ cowls, they had a metal rectangle engraved with a stylized leaf. 

I had thought them just to be grey decorations or something—just like the grey headphone-like-things—especially since they were sometimes covered up by those poofy hats. 

But no. These were _hitai-ate_ —metal plates attached to cloth that were worn visibly, usually used to denote allegiance to one of the Hidden Villages. They’re technically “forehead protectors,” but they can technically be worn on any other part of the body. 

That meant that these were _iryō-nin_ , medical-nin—ninja who specialize in using chakra, that glowy-magic-thing, to heal. 

And I now realized that I recognized the outfit I had seen so many people wearing—a long-sleeved shirt and pants in a dull indigo with thick-soled navy sandals, under a bulky dull-green vest—flak jacket—that had pockets on the front chest-area and padded shoulders and a raised collar/neck guard. It was familiar not just because it was so common, but because it was the standard _shinobi_ uniform. It was the default dress of the ninja that made up most of the population of _Konohagakure no Sato_ , the Village Hidden in the Leaves—a heavily-militarized population full of people trained from childhood to fight and _kill_ , albeit in very flashy ways and while wearing brightly-coloured clothes. 

Maybe I should have panicked. Maybe I should have gone absolutely hysterical over the realization that I now lived in a rather violent time as a citizen of a military autocracy that was full of trained killers and had no qualms about training child soldiers, almost no guaranteed rights, various rather-egregious human-rights violations, limited healthcare, terrible mental-health support, and in which I had every chance of dying miserably. 

Honestly, the apparent dangers are numerous, very nightmare-inducing, and probably only get worse the more I try and think about it.

However, it was also the setting of a _shonen_ manga/anime that centered around a cheerful blonde in bright orange clothes who triumphed over insurmountable odds through grit, persistence, and the Power of Friendship™. It was also something I had a soft spot for.

It also meant… _chakra_. 

And it seemed like something clicked into place.

Because… I hadn’t realized, but… that was part of why I adored this world so much. The lazy languor I found it so easy to slip into, the warmth and comfort of the glowy-hands… this world was filled with what the author of the story had called _chakra_. 

It was a funny name, but it would do. 

The _chakra_ filled the world, and to me, I had treated it as a warm blanket, or a hot bath—something safe and cozy that made it easy for me to simply… slip away. To just forget about my worries and ignore the world around me and just _be_. To not think.

I tried reaching out, but I wasn’t sure _how_ , and the chakra seemed to slip through my clumsy fingers like warm water.

No, that wasn’t it, at least not yet.

I relaxed, closing my eyes and falling almost fully into that state of relaxation and looking _inward_ and… 

Ah. There.

I imagined it as a little ball of glowing flame, something squishy and dense, and maybe it was my imagination, but I felt warmer. 

Huh. 

Well, that was interesting. 

* * *

I loved the wind. Some people loved sunny days, others cloudy, and still others liked when there were fluffy white clouds in a clear blue sky, or rainbows after a light sprinkle. Some felt most comfortable with the pitter-patter of rain, or drifting snowflakes in the air.

For me, I loved wind. There was nothing that cheered me up quite like rustling leaves or an invisible hand raking through my hair, or something gently pushing me places as if I were its favorite playmate.

Wind seemed to set everything in motion, and its presence meant the world came to life. 

When Okaa-san or Otō-san carried me out, I giggled at the crisp breeze in my face and tried to make sense of the new colors that blurred at the corners of my vision. I imagined my eyes were getting better at seeing things, but the improvements seemed so small that I couldn’t help but wonder if I had imagined them. 

I ignored that thought. 

The colors around me meant flowers, presumably, and the bright green colors were likely new growth.

Which meant, it was probably spring.

Spring wouldn’t be my favorite season here in Konohagakure, the Hidden Leaf, not with the rain that seemed to fill the skies with clouds and a persistent drizzle.

However, while Okaa-san and Otō-san carried me, I didn’t have to pay any attention to the parts I didn’t like—the mud, the damp, the puddles that I could hear lining the streets. 

And while indoors, I didn’t mind the rain so much. I enjoyed listening to it clatter against the shutters and roofs as I lay inside a new wooden crib—Okaa-san and Otō-san had recently put me into it during the day while they puttered around in the place that smelled the most like tea. 

It was comfortable, with a firm mattress and wooden structure—with a wood of a lighter color on the inside that felt like it had only been sanded and not polished and also smelled really nice somehow—and I found it very easy to drift off to the sound of rain and warmth that came from the maybe-ball of probably- _chakra_ that glowed inside my abdomen. 

* * *

I absolutely _hated_ hot weather. 

The rain? I had been fine with it, even when it seemed to pour from the skies, because the dampness didn’t really affect me while I was indoors. However, the humidity stayed, and as the weather became warmer, it became more and more uncomfortable. 

I assumed it was sometime close to summer, but whatever it was, I felt hot and sticky and just generally vaguely miserable. 

I missed the cooler days. There was one occasion, where Otō-san had hung something outside a window that fluttered in the brisk breeze, and Okaa-san had pulled out an entire decorative set-up, with multiple levels and a figure of a what seemed to be a fully-armored _samurai_ as the main attraction, surrounded by flowers and tigers and colorful fish. 

It had been fascinating to look at, and Okaa-san had let me play with the beautifully-carved, intricately-painted fish. I had really loved running my fingers over the carved scales, and the shape fit nicely into my palm as I waved it around gleefully. 

Unfortunately, the fanciful set-up was long gone. These days, the air seemed stagnant, and the oppressive heat felt like a heavy, damp blanket that was trying its best to smother me. 

Ironically, the _coldbrightsterile_ place— _Konoha Byōin_ , or the Leaf Hospital, because my brain still had to adjust to using words instead of feelings and impressions—had become one of my favorite places. However, the glowy-hands— _chakra, it’s chakra_ —had lost some of its attraction in the light of my new-found fussiness. The one from _silkyhairandbitterherbs_ different, though. It felt cool and smooth and still to soothe me, which only made me long for those visits even more.

My eyesight had been getting better, and it was one of the things I was the most ecstatic about. I still got headaches, but they were getting less frequent. Also, my eyes could focus better on things and I had better depth perception, which made trying to grab at things a lot easier. Before, I had to estimate how close things were based on how large the blur representing them was. It’s… odd, realizing that I don’t have to do that, anymore.

I had also found myself getting _bored_ , which was really annoying because I couldn’t do much. 

It hadn’t been that bad during the day, admittedly, since Kaa-san and Tō-san let me stay downstairs. 

It turns out they ran a tea shop. 

The raised wooden crib that Kaa-san and Tō-san had set up for me also offered a wonderful view of the shop, where I enjoyed listening to the customers talk and watching them come and go. I was starting to pick out words, even if I found it frustrating how my mouth and vocal cords simply wouldn’t cooperate. I did manage to spend more time practising after getting over my self-consciousness, but it felt really awkward to just sound out random vowels at first. 

Oō-san and Okaa-san are really wonderful, though, and they were absolutely thrilled when I worked up the courage to try addressing them for the first time. I couldn’t do much more than distinguish the vowels, since my tongue refused to cooperate with the consonants, but I think they knew what I was trying to get at. 

My efforts at getting myself used to the new language were also helped by how Okaa-san and Otō-san also took turns carrying me around and pointing at things while careful enunciating the words. Otō-san actually made a calendar at one point, and Okaa-san used it to teach me the months and days of the week. He also brought me figures for when they demonstrated actions. 

I was most touched by their patience—I’ve had to go over the same things multiple times on occasion, but they just kept smiling and slowly repeating the words to me.

Another occasionally-frustrating endeavor I had begun undergoing were my efforts to sit up.

At this point, my neck was strong enough that I could maintain a sitting position, but if I fell over, it was very frustrating to try and get back up. Usually, I had to resort to calling Kaa-san or Tō-san over to help prop me up. 

Even so, it was quite fun to try rocking myself up into a sitting position or try rolling myself back-and-forth in the space given. They ate up my attention, and I enjoyed the slightly-sore feeling in my muscles at the end of the day. I also relished in my infantile flexibility—everything so _easy_. While I didn’t have the muscle control for some of the stretches I wanted to try, toe-touches and butterfly stretches weren’t too hard. I even managed to figure out a slightly bastardized back-bend that wasn’t really a back-bend, since I was mostly lying on my side, but it stretched the right muscles and felt _really_ nice. 

The smooth wooden bars were an amazing help, to be honest. Their meticulous craftsmanship meant that they fit comfortably in my little pudgy hands and that I could easily use them to stabilize myself, whether for my stretches or when I tried to sit up.

Sometimes, the nice customers would also stop by to coo and make baby-babble noises at me.

Most of them were the people who walked in to buy packets or boxes of tea and left after paying. They ranged all the way from adult-aged to grandparent-aged. There weren’t a lot of younger customers. 

However, some people came in more regularly, or stayed a while to chat. Some sat at the tables after getting a teapot and a set of cups and some small snacks. Others, usually the older ones, also grabbed what seemed like a board game and clustered in groups, talking and laughing about things I couldn’t hear clearly. 

There was one person who dropped in about twice a week—he was tall, with long, ash blond hair in a ponytail that poofed in spikes around the top of his head over a _hitai-ate_ and strong facial features and turquoise-green eyes that wrinkled when he smiled. I remembered him well because he always arrived early, and after talking with Okaa-san or Otō-san, he would walk over, crouch down low enough that I could see his face through the smooth wooden bars of the crib, and talk with me. I don’t remember how it started, and he never expected me to answer, but he looked at me and nodded seriously whenever I burbled and always left with a smile and a pat on my head. I might have been wrong about his name, but I’m pretty sure he was Yamanaka Inoichi-sama. 

There was another who dropped in almost every other day, usually around mid-morning. He would order a pot of tea and snacks, and then go settle down at a corner table with his orders, a cup, a book, and some writing utensils. It was also a very _large_ assortment of snacks—the plates and containers usually managed to fill a small table. 

He didn’t speak to me, but he would occasionally come over and smile at me and let me try and grab his finger. He was… well, a little shorter than average and rather round, with an equally-round face that was only emphasized by the circular, almost salmon-colourred markings on his cheeks and the tiny round glasses he wore perched on his nose. He also had warm, medium-brown hair, shaped into a small peak on his head, that made his head look a bit like a _bao_ dumpling. It was matched by a small, moustache that was the same shade of warm medium-brown. 

Based on his… form and appetite, as well as those markings on his cheeks, I was pretty sure he was an Akimichi, even if I don’t know his name.

There was also this old, white-haired man who came in maybe once every other week. He always wore rather traditional _kimono_ , usually a loose _haori_ jacket over a casual _yukata_ robe, as well as this really weird old-fashioned hat—it’s hard to describe, but imagine a chef’s hat made of fabric, with no pleating, then pretend someone folded the upper half of it backwards. 

He was one of the customers who ordered tea, maybe a snack, and then spent what seemed like _ages_ playing a board game.

I remember him because of the hat, and because he sometimes came in with a rather intimidating _shinobi_. To be fair, the ninja was probably just grumpy from sleep deprivation, but he always had what looks like thick eyeliner on—black for the upper lid, and a wide stripe of green along the bottom—and stubble on his chin, as well as dark hair in a ponytail. Together with his very good resting-bitch-face, he looked permanently grumpy. 

He wasn’t actually that bad, though. On his first visit (that I remembered), I remembered spending more time than was probably polite frowning in his direction. I didn’t know much, but I could see someone in the _shinobi_ uniform, and I could feel and hear the apprehension of the surrounding customers, so I was curious.

We may or may not have had a staring contest, but it ended with him coming closer and poking me in the face, to which I responded by frowning, babbling some disapproving nonsense, and trying to swat at his hand. The last action may or may not have been interpreted as a “come closer” gesture, and when he squatted down for a closer look, I may or may not have ended up slapping him. 

In my defense, I had absolutely abysmal levels of control over my limbs. 

And in his defense, all he did was enter in what was probably another staring contest with me. 

Now, whenever the old man dragged him in, he just carried a chair over and sat next to me. I’m not sure how—or even whether—I counted as good company, but I quite enjoyed his visits. He had a talent for deciphering what I meant with my babbles, and part of my thought he might actually be taking me seriously, which wasn’t something that happened often. Okaa-san’s friend— _silkyhairandbitterherbs_ —had also done the same, but they seemed to be the only ones. Okaa-san and Otō-san listened, but they didn’t give such heavy weight to my words. And the ash-blond shinobi with the long ponytail—maybe-Yamanaka-Inoichi—also listened, but I couldn’t help but sometimes get the feeling that he was just humoring me. 

I mean, I didn’t really mind. It was just as entertaining for me to act cute, and I just appreciated that they gave me some time and attention.

Still, it was nice to have someone treat me so seriously, even if I sometimes wondered if he didn’t feel silly about treating a baby’s babbling with such focus.

These were the most memorable customers. I mean, I think there’s probably been at least three different members of the Hyūga clan who’ve stopped by the store, but I only know one, and that’s because they looked at me while I looked at them, and I remembered being fascinated by how high his ponytail was. Like, it had a very narrow section that was tied, and then expanded into floof. I really wanted to try and touch the floof.

All I really remembered about his face, though, was that he looked very serious. However, most shinobi, especially while in uniform, tended to look vaguely serious. And regarding the Hyūga shinobi clan, well, they have rather distinct features—white, pupil-less eyes and usually-dark hair and a tendency to wear more traditional clothing when not in _shinobi_ uniform—but for me and my still-blurry long-distance vision, that simply wasn’t enough to distinguish them. 

And other customers were even less recognizable. More to the point, however, they also did not have the tendency to wear the exact same clothes and hairstyle on a regular basis. And without the unique visual cues, even if they stopped by my crib to say hi or wave or play with me for a moment, I had a difficult time remembering them.

If my inability to recognize people had just been limited to the occasional repeat customer of the store, it probably would have been fine. Yes, I wished I had a better memory, and it was even more frustrating when Okaa-san and Otō-san seemed to be able to remember many of the customers by name, but I was still young, and I already knew this was a weakness of mine, so I could work on it. 

The problem was that I didn’t just stay inside—and outside, it became significantly more embarrassing when Okaa-san had to introduce me to one of her friends for the fourth or fifth time. 

For one, it somehow only became worse when I realized I could remember the fact that she was the person who made the nice _wagashi_ (and _namagashi_ ) we served in the store to accompany the tea, and I could remember that this was my eighth introduction, but _I still had no clue what her name was_. 

Yes, I knew I was still a baby and thus, no one in their right mind would have expected me to remember. However, I also knew that I wasn’t a baby, and I also knew that I have been terrible at remembering names and faces for _years_. 

So, this was just absolutely humiliating.

* * *

The hot, sticky summer soon faded into autumn. The leaves on the trees turned bright colors, and crisp breezes seemed to blow them everywhere.

I started teething, which was horribly irritating and full of the never-ending urge to gnaw on the muslin cloths that Otō-san gave me. I also managed to also pull myself to a standing position, an achievement that was accompanied by a truly unprecedented amount of glee. 

I’d also added splits to my stretching routine—both side and middle splits, which _ached_ , but the pain took a definite backseat to my glee over my fast improvement.

Despite my better motor-control, I still wasn’t quite comfortable with the thought of walking, however. Also, rolling was infinitely preferable to trying to crawl places. I still tried to crawl, but it always hurt my neck and knees. Also, it was just so _slow_. 

Unfortunately, my newfound freedom came with some restrictions—mainly, Okaa-san and Otō-san spending more time hovering around me, as if to make sure I wasn’t about to disappear on them. They also spent quite a bit of time redecorating parts of the house. 

First, a little background. I like our home—for all that it fit in with the other, modern, multiple-story houses from the outside, it was rather traditional on the inside. It had wood-and-rice-paper covering the cold walls and ceilings and carved wooden accents everywhere. There were sliding screens and lanterns and soft _tatami_ mats on the floor wherever there wasn’t wood or, in the case of the bathrooms, small decorative ceramic tiles. 

The bathrooms, in contrast with the rest of the house, were quite modern and elegant. I did find I preferred it that way, though, even if I wasn’t quite big enough to actually use any of the facilities. 

Similarly, Okaa-san and Otō-san didn’t sleep on traditional _futon_ bedding on the floor—they preferred a bed, located on the part of their bedroom that had wooden flooring instead of _tatami_ , since the weight of a bed would damage the delicate mats. 

Our home was really a two-story building. We technically only lived on the second floor of the building, but the ground floor played host to our tea shop, which I considered part of my home in every way that should have counted. The fact that I now automatically associated the wafting scent of tea with comfort and home might have played a role in that. 

The additions that Otō-san and Okaa-san added were effective, elegant, and absolutely extravagant. 

An army of cushions rested along every vertical surface, ready to catch me if I rolled into them. They were soft but firm, and weighted heavily enough with sand that it took a lot of force to move them out of place. Part of me wondered if they were custom-made. With how well they fit the house, they must have been? 

That part of me immediately started estimating the expenses and added in the wonderful parts of my new life that simply didn’t make enough sense—from the expensive-looking furnishings to how I had received such consistent attention from properly-trained _iryō-nin_ —and promptly became confused.

Either owning a shop was significantly more profitable than I thought… or I was missing an important part of the puzzle.

Even so, my confusion wasn't enough for me to continue pursuing answers—especially because I couldn’t even ask questions yet. 

During the autumn, I also answered a small question I’d had—I finally managed to look into a mirror. To be fair, I had probably managed to look into mirrors before, back when my vision was blurry and generally unreliable, but this was the first time I both recognized that there was a mirror and recognized myself. 

Honestly? My first thought was that I looked weird.

I had fully expected to look like Okaa-san, with brown hair and brown eyes, or Otō-san with black hair and orange eyes, or some combination of the two. Also, part of me still had not expected a baby when I finally looked into the mirror.

I didn’t really look like Otō-san or Okaa-san. I supposed my eyes were a bit like Otō-san’s, but mine are lighter, more golden—amber, rather than orange. The rest of me… was still hard to tell. I wasn’t even technically even a toddler, after all, and it was a bit hard to predict bone structure through so many layers of baby-fat. 

The part of me that I was quite certain didn’t look like Otō-san or Okaa-san was my hair.

It wasn’t some shade of brown-black. It wasn’t even dark. When I had looked into that mirror, I almost recoiled. Because my hair was _white_. With the afternoon sun on me, it had practically glowed, and I had thought almost myself confronted with some human mass of glowing chakra. 

It was still the reason I didn’t quite know what to think of my appearance, yet.

I definitely didn’t inherit the color of my face from Otō-san—I was pale, perhaps almost as pale as Okaa-san’s _silkyhairandbitterherbs_ friend. But, at the same time, Okaa-san was rather pale, and it made sense that I might have inherited it from her?

Either way, the fact remained that my hair and skin were both so pale that they almost blended into each. I could barely see my eyebrows and eyelashes, and only the texture of my hair prevented me from looking as bald as I could have. 

I tried to reason through my self-consciousness. 

For one, I was a baby. Very few people held babies to any standards of beauty. Secondly, hair sometimes changed colors as people grew up, right? So, I still had a chance. Thirdly, this might have just been me overthinking things. There were plenty of people who seemed to think I was cute enough, so it might have just been me overthinking things again. 

In the end, I just decided to ignore it. If I _did_ look horrifying, it wasn’t like I could do much. If I didn’t look horrifying, well, there was no point for further preoccupation with my appearance.

* * *

As the weather became colder, I began grumbling more about my visits to the Hospital. It wasn’t so bad now that I had more mobility and could bring along an extra-warm blanket, but it was still really cold on some days.

Though, speaking about mobility, I’d finally managed to walk. I couldn’t do without holding something for support, but the feeling of being able to move on two legs again was absolutely exhilarating. Also, exhausting and very shaky, but I was optimistic that I’d get better. 

And thus, soft plush carpets were quickly strewn over the floors upstairs. 

It was also around this time that I started eating solids. Puréed solids, yeah, but it was such a relief. I’d been coping fairly well with my… feeding times, mainly through a mix of repression and denial and deliberate ignorance, but it was really nice having something I didn’t have to pretend never happened. Also, it was nice getting to taste something new.

The patient, polite, not-actually-scary medical-nin also began stopping by the store. I almost didn’t recognize him with hair—a warm medium-brown colour that fell to just under his ears in a rather awkward style—but his enormous blank grey eyes and the dark markings around them were quite distinctive. 

He didn’t stay long—usually just long enough to grab a cup of tea and sit in the probably-tired-not-scary green-eyeliner-shinobi’s chair, which had slowly found its way to a permanent residence next to me. 

He was slowly becoming my third-favorite visitor to the tea store. 

When he arrived early enough that there weren’t any people, he would do the glowy-hands-thing, and then I wouldn’t have to go to the Hospital that week. 

I was debating making him my second-favorite visitor, but I decided to wait a little longer before I upset the ranking. 

My favorite visitor was the grumpy, green-eyeliner- _shinobi_. Not long ago, I had managed to stare him down into taking me around the area of the store with the shelves and reading me the labels of all the boxed and packaged tea there. After a few repeats, it became almost routine, and I quite enjoyed learning the types of tea. Learning about the medicinal benefits of certain dried herbs we used in our tea combinations was also really interesting, and I found the shinobi’s slow drawled voice and blunt speaking style to be wonderful for helping me remember the herbs and their properties. It was also really nice of him to stick to small words or explain himself whenever I tugged on his ear.

I suppose we also had staring contests on a rather oddly-regular basis, but those were more confusing than anything else. 

My second-favorite visitor was the ash-blond now-definitely-Yamanaka-Inoichi-sama-because-I’d-heard-people-saying-his-name, mainly because of how he still took some time on every visit to play with me. True, he visited more often and more consistently than green-eyeliner- _shinobi-_ san, but in terms of time spent, green-eyeliner- _shinobi_ -san still beat him. 

I wasn’t sure yet if I wanted to bump him down and place Mogusa-san—the blank-eyed medical-nin—as my second favorite customer. On one hand, Yamanaka Inoichi-sama had visited longer. On the other hand, I’d known Mogusa-san for almost as long, _and_ he had the added advantage of the glowy-hands. 

It was quite the dilemma. 

* * *

It seemed that the days became even colder. I almost never left the house. If Okaa-san or Otō-san took me out, it was always just to the Hospital and back, and only while I was bundled up in enough layers that I couldn’t even stand upright.

Even then, it was uncommon, especially with Mogusa-san’s visits. I also met the other two of my regular medic-nin—the stern-faced one, who was Kanpō-san and had long, greyish-brown hair that he wore in a high ponytail when it wasn’t under a cowl and hat, and Kitō-san, the rounder-faced, cheerful one whose short black hair stood up in small spikes all over his head.

They didn’t come very often—nowhere near as often as Mogusa—but I appreciated how their visits means I wouldn’t have to go outside.

It began snowing, too—small flurries of fluffy white snowflakes that usually melted in the next day’s sunlight, but soon began to build up on the ground and against windows and on rooftops. 

The layers of snow were still thin—nowhere near as thick as some of what I’ve seen—but I found myself fascinated. Icicles also grew, and I spent more and more time in front of a window, half-buried inside a heap of blankets and scarves, with only my eyes showing. 

The sky became darker earlier, and I couldn’t but enjoy how Okaa-san and Otō-san would spend more time with me. 

I loved when Otō-san would sing to me, and how he would sometimes hold me up under my arms and bounce me all over the room. 

Or when Okaa-san pulled out an instrument and played for us. Sometimes, she would let me touch the polished wood or one of the strings, and I would make a sound, and she would laugh and clap and hug me and drop a flurry of kisses all over my face until I was babbling and trying to get away, and then she would laugh some more. 

Sometimes, Otō-san would tell stories, as dramatically as if he were putting on a play, and Okaa-san would laugh at points and interrupt him and explain things slowly to me. Other times, they would pull out sheets of paper and brushes and ink and draw the creatures and characters of the stories. 

There were stories about mischievous _tanuki_ , a little mischievous, fat-bellied, raccoon-like creature that carried a leaf on its head and could shapeshift and loved getting drunk. _Kitsune_ , foxes with multiple tails and magical powers and just as fond of mischief as they could be helpful. There were _samebito_ and _kōjin_ who lived under the sea and wove the finest silks that ever were, a magical fabric that wouldn’t even get wet in water, and cried tears of pearls or precious gems. There were dragons that swam in the sky and oceans, long-nosed winged _tengu_ that lived in remote mountains and could be protective just as easily as they could be vengeful. 

Okaa-san told legends of the _kami_ —of the love of Izanagi and Izanami and how they pulled land from the oceans, of the birth of Amaterasu of the sun and Tsukiyomi of the moon and Susanoo of the storm and the quarrels between them. There were stories of Inari and the _kitsune_ that served them. Of Ryūjin and his palace under the sea. The _kakuriyo_ , the Hidden Realms, the world of _mononoke_ and _ayakashi_ and _yōkai_ and anything that didn’t quite belong to this world.

I learned about different lands, about countries that were covered in snow all year round, about sand or grassland that stretched as far as the eye could see. About waves that danced and sparkled in sunlight. Rooms, lined with colourful tiles that formed intricate patterns. Wooden pagodas that seemed to pierce the clouds. A palace, with halls lined with panels of carved wood and precious stone and metal. 

I learned about uncles and aunts and grandparents and a family tree so wide that it took Otō-san nearly a week to finish telling me the stories about them. 

I learned about a family, a clan that had changed names once and was probably a hundred times older than Konohagakure and claimed descent from an actual _kami_ , one who served as the _tennō-hohitsu-no-kami_ in the heavenly palace where Amaterasu ruled. And I learned about a different _kami_ , one of war rather than scholarly affairs, who was also tasked with protecting the clan and its descendants. 

I learned about _Hi no Kuni_ , the Land of Fire, the country in which Konohagakure was located, ruled by a _daimyō_ who claimed descent from Amaterasu. I learned about the courts of nobility where Okaa-san’s family had served for generations, about the massive web of _clan_ and _family_ that tied Otō-san’s family together even as they spread out and traveled across what seemed like the entirety of this world, through the Elemental Nations and beyond. 

And I was just really, _really_ confused. Awed, yes. Without a doubt. 

Okaa-san and Otō-san were absolutely _amazing_ at story-telling, and the flickering glow of the fireplace and lamps only emphasized the atmosphere.

But when fact seemed to transcend into fantasy and stories blurred the borders of what was real and what wasn’t… were Okaa-san and Otō-san exaggerating? Well, they undoubtedly were, but to what extent? The little voice in the back of my mind reminded me of earlier doubts, about my bewilderment over how… comfortably Otō-san and Okaa-san lived and how they doted on me, even with just what looked like a small tea shop as their main source of income.

Another thought struck me. 

It seemed ridiculous, because I knew the story, and there hadn’t been any mention of anything even close to some of what Okaa-san and Otō-san told me about. But… now the question became something deeper, more philosophical. Would I only rely on what I knew? Would I just cling to my memories of a story?

This world… it was a world. It was real. At least, I desperately wanted it to be. I still had doubts lingering at times, and I could never fully escape the gaping uncertainty of _what if this was just a dream?_

However, just like all stray thoughts that plagued me, I had set those aside, buried them somewhere in my mind. 

I would do the same with these.

Regardless of whether they were true or not… these stories were beautiful. Surely, that was enough? I didn’t have to prove their credibility or argue for disbelief. If I wanted them to be real, if part of me longed for them to be real, I could simply treat them that way. 

As long as I didn’t voice my beliefs, who needed to know?

It wasn’t anyone’s business but mine.

* * *

My birthday was an odd event. 

I’m not sure if it were actually the date of my birth—the seasons seemed to match up but maybe everyone’s birthday was celebrated with the advent of the new year—but my parents certainly went to great efforts to make the day festive. 

Many of the preparations—from the extensive cleaning to the weird decorations ( _kadomatsu_ ) made from bamboo, pine, and plum branches to that one set-up that looked a bit like a snowman Otō-san called _kagami-mochi_ —seemed like they were done for the new year.

But, there came a day where they did something _different_. And the celebrations on that day felt more like they were for me. At least, I felt fairly certain that it wasn’t traditional to saddle everyone with a heavy lump of… _something_ on their back to celebrate the passing of the old year and the coming of the new one. 

The weirdest part was that, unless my ears were deceiving me, the heavy mass they strapped to my back was _mochi_. As in, the sweet, sticky dessert made by repeatedly pounding glutinous rice.

And my parents wanted me to _walk with it on my back_. 

I mean, yes, they’d also apparently put it in a decoration, but… who started this tradition? Who had taken one look at _mochi_ and decided to do this? Who thought this was a good idea?

Well, there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Besides, I was fairly confident in my ability to walk. 

I reached down, pulling off my little baby booties. My feet would get cold, but if I was going to do this, I was going to _do this_. 

I carefully propped myself up on my feet and stood up, wobbling a little under the extra weight, but I managed to regain balance. Staring at the door of the room, I frowned. I wasn’t quite sure _where_ I was supposed to walk. To Okaa-san? To Otō-san? But they were on opposite sides of me.

Looking at the gap in the open sliding door, I made a decision.

If they didn’t want me to go there, they would have closed it fully, right?

Testing my balance one last time, I booked it for the door.

* * *

I was not supposed to book it for the door. 

That became very clear, very quickly. 

I started doubtfully at Okaa-san, who was blocking the door, then back at Otō-san, who’d almost fall flat on his face when lurched forward from a crouch. 

I pointed an arm, babbling in annoyed confusion. Well, what did they want me to _do_ , then? 

Okaa-san crouched down, grabbed my arm, and let me back to the center of the room, then pushed me to sit, before removing the _mochi_ from my back. She also grabbed my discarded baby-booties and carefully slipped them back over my feet, before double-checking I was seated, and then walked over to Otō-san. 

Apparently, they just wanted me to sit still for now. 

Well, I supposed that was easy enough to do. 

I watch, curious, as Okaa-san and Otō-san pull objects out of a box and set them around me in a wide circle.

There’s a set of dining utensils and plates, a string of what looks like coins and a wooden abacus, a map weighed down with small trinkets, a folded fan with two dolls in extravagant traditional _kimono_ , a sword and bow with a small _samurai_ helmet, a blunted set of _shinobi_ weapons (a _kunai_ knife, a throwing _shuriken_ , a scroll, and interestingly enough, a blank _hitai-ate_ ), a writing set with papers and brushes and an ink set, and finally… the oddest arrangement—a broken-off branch from a tree, a stick with two long strips of paper folded in zigzags on each side, a handle with small bells attached to it through metal rings, a string of wooden beads, and a loosely-coiled fiber rope.

While I had never seen some of these objects before, I knew what this was. Okaa-san and Otō-san were putting things in front of me to see which I would pick up, which would supposedly indicate my future paths. 

Well, this should be simple enough.

I put my hands on the floor and pushed myself back up to a standing position, then wobbled over past the _shinobi_ tools to the writing set. I grabbed two clean brushes and used them to push the _shinobi_ weapons they sat next to out of the circle. That should be clear enough, right? I mean, I liked chakra and I really wanted to learn to use it, but I wasn’t about to scare my parents like that.

I then decided to toddle over to the dining utensils and plates, and I liked food, and food was relatively harmless, right? 

No. 

You see, there was a reason I had taken off my baby-booties, and the reason was that they were slippery. Normally, I was fine, but as I walked towards the setting symbolizing food, I wobbled and accidentally stepped on one of the paper zig-zags of that odd arrangement. I’d slipped, sat down heavily, knocked over the bells with a _crash_ , then rolled backward into something hard—the scroll from the _shinobi_ arrangement, which must have rolled over. 

Otō-san immediately came over and reached out, but I batted his hand away.

I pulled myself back to my feet, pushing the scroll out of the way, then grabbed the brushes again. 

I looked at the distance to the dining set, calculating. I wasn’t sure I could walk there. My legs were still a bit shaky, and with booties on?

Nodding as I came to a decision, I crouched down… and rolled myself in that direction.

I think I rolled over part of that odd arrangement, and I found myself getting too close to the money-and-math section, but I managed to grab a pair of chopsticks from the eating arrangement. Then, I pushed myself up and toddled over to the map.

However, just as I was sitting down, I realized… I’d already messed things up a bit. Why not… just grab _everything_? 

It felt like a lightbulb had turned on inside my head. 

Turning back, foot slipping a little on the paper of the map, I contemplated the abacus for a moment before I settled on grabbing the string of coins, crawled back over the map and grabbed at a random trinket—I ended up with two, a pretty stone and an earring?—then continued my path of almost-destruction towards the rest of the circle.

In front of the fan and dolls, I contemplated for a moment, admiring the many layers of the female doll’s outfit, before grabbing the fan, hesitated over the bow before grabbing the sword—the bow was cool, but while it was probably lighter than the sword, I would have almost certainly tripped over it, added the least-violent elements of the shinobi collection—the scroll and, after a thought, the blank _hitai-ate_ —to my armload of assorted objects, then dumped everywhere down as I sat firmly in front of that ‘first’ display. 

Ok. That was… done. I think. 

I looked at Okaa-san and Otō-san hesitantly. It had been a rather chaotic mess, but… it had all worked out, right?

They were smiling.

I guess that’s good?

Now that the adrenaline of trying not to disappoint everyone wore off, I realized that I was really tired.

I heaved a mental sign, staring dejectedly at my slapdash pile of objects. 

This could probably have gone better. But it was fine! I felt a little bad that I messed up Okaa-san and Otō-san’s careful arrangements, but… they probably expected it? Right? I mean, it’s not like I could have done much else? 

I sighed again, this time out loud. 

I don’t _think_ I did anything wrong… so why was there a sinking feeling at the back of my mind?

Whatever, it’s fine, I was just overthinking again. I’m sure it was nothing. 

* * *

Over the wide sea

Towards its many distant isles

My ship sets sail.

Will the fishing boats thronged here

Proclaim my journey to the world?

— Ono no Takamura

* * *

わたの原

八十島かけて

こぎ出ぬと

人には告げよ

あまのつり舟

— 参議篁

* * *

_Wata no hara_

_Yasoshima kakete_

_Kogi idenu to_

_Hito ni wa tsugeyo_

_Ama no tsuri bune_

_— Sangi Takamura_

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

_Across a mountain stream_

_There is a woven dam_

_Built by the busy wind_

_Of maple leaves_

_Powerless to flow away._

* * *

The rest of my birthday felt anticlimactic after the absolute mess of a birthday celebration. I felt exhausted, and while I wasn’t quite infantile enough to throw a temper tantrum about it, I definitely didn’t want anything getting between me and my rest. There were sweets and nice-looking food, but since I couldn’t exactly eat any of it, it was easy to just drift off in a corner of the room, leaning against the cushions. 

I was woken up by someone picking me up and a familiar scent—something bitter and herbal.

I mumbled, still sleepy, even as I reached out my hand and grabbed a fistful of silky-smooth hair and fabric, pulling myself closer. 

They were _late_. I hadn’t seen them in what seemed like half a year, and… and I really missed them, okay?

“ _Shh, Makoto-chan...let go…hair…_ ” Okaa-san murmured, but I only caught some of the words, and I absolutely refused, pulling myself closer to _silkyhairandbitterherbs_. 

“ _Let…be_ ,” a deep voice hummed, and an arm wrapped around me as _silkyhairandbitterherbs_ walked with me, rocking me gently. “ _…no bother, I assure you…long time…no hurry…_ ”

“ _...busy, hime-chan?_ ” Okaa-asked, voice quiet. 

I blinked blearily, opening my eyes a sliver, just enough to see the faint, flickering glow from the fire. What was that Obaa-san had just called them? I don’t remember ever catching a name for _silkyhairandbitterherbs_ , and that was a bit disappointing because they were the highest person on my favorite-people list after Okaa-san and Otō-san 

Even Otō-san and Okaa-san had names, though I still wasn’t entirely sure how accurately I remembered them— _Kobayashi Hiroya_ and _Fujiwara_ (now, often _Kobayashi_ ) _Kimiko_. 

_Hime-chan_. I tried sounding out the name. _Hime_ seemed a little odd as a name—didn’t it mean “princess” or something?—but I wasn’t that familiar with the language, yet, so I could have just been mistaken. At least I knew I was right about Okaa-san being very good friends with _silkyhairandbitterherbs_ , if they were fine with Okaa-san calling them _-chan_. That suffix was normally used for small children, right? It was definitely something cutesy, and not usually used for grownups—unless it was something you had grown accustomed to, I supposed. 

I decided to try it out, to see if I was right.

“Kaa-san?” I mumbled, the sound slightly distorted. “—ime-san?”

I felt the person carrying me still, and I mumbled again, louder in case they missed the first time, “Hime-san?”

“ _Makoto-chan_ ,” Okaa-san whispered excitedly. “ _Say that again, can you? Makoto-chan… come on, say ‘hime-san.’ Come on, ‘hime-san_.’”

I grumbled, shifting slightly so that there wasn’t cloth in front of my face. I tried to pull myself higher, but my arms wouldn’t cooperate. So… 

“Hime-san. _Ue_.”

“ _Ah!_ ” Okaa-san stifled her excitement. “ _Did you hear that? He can say Okaa-san and Otō-san, but…_ ”

“ _Makoto-kun_ ,” _hime-san_ murmured, patting me on the back and shifting me up a little higher. “ _Yes, Makoto-kun, I understand. Up. Very good… very impressive._ ”

She hummed something nonsensical, rocking me gently, hands starting to glow with _chakra_. 

“ _Sleep, Makoto-kun. Don’t worry… shhh…_ ”

The deep vibrations, combined with the warmth of the chakra, meant that I started to doze off again. 

I shifted again, but my eyes were already closing. 

“ _Shhh…_ ”

* * *

The next morning, I woke up a giggling Okaa-san and no _hime-san_. However, around my wrist, there was a new addition—a circular wooden bracelet, with decorative swirls painted all over it.

It was a gift from _hime-san_ , but it was extra special for a different reason—if I hadn’t checked it closer, I might have thought that the soothing feeling the bracelet seemed to give me was just my imagination. However, it wasn’t imaginary—the bracelet actually released a slow, steady stream of soothing _chakra_ , and I loved it all the more for that. 

It was a little odd to have that familiarly smooth, slightly cool feeling without the smell of bitter herbs, but the bracelet was also comforting. I especially enjoyed curling up with it whenever I reached for the little ball of _chakra_ that seemed to sit a little ways under my stomach.

After a few weeks of watching and poking at it, I’d managed to coax it to move around a little, and it was really exciting when that happened!

In those few weeks, I’d also rounded out my list of names. 

I already knew the medic-nin who occasionally visited— _Mogusa-san_ with the blank grey eyes, cheerful _Kitō-san_ , and serious _Kanpō-san_ —but now, grumpy-green-eyeliner- _shinobi_ -san was _Ensui-san,_ and I addressed Yamanaka Inoichi-sama with a mangled _Inochi-tama_ after a stuttered attempt at pronouncing _Yamanaka-sama_. I still tended to miss a syllable, but _i-no-chi_ was close enough to _i-no-i-chi_ for me to count it as a success. 

I definitely wasn’t quick with pronouncing the names—I often had to break them into individual syllables the same way I did with _Inochi-tama_ —but I was pretty proud of myself. 

Grumpy-green-eyeliner-san— _Ensui-san_ —had adapted to my now-verbal commands with the same ease that he had learned to understand what my grasping hands meant, and he patiently listened for my stilted directions— _ue_ (up) for when I wanted him to pick me up, and _shita_ (down) for when I wanted him to set me down. 

Admittedly, it was probably even less efficient than my former, non-verbal cues, but the feeling of actually _speaking_ and being understood was simply too exciting for me to not speak. I did still indicate directions with eager flailing, though. It was just easier. 

The thing was… it was too easy to like Ensui-san. I had every reason to. He still came irregularly, but he spent time with me, and he was patient with me, and it was definitely thanks to him that my vocabulary had increased so quickly—not to mention my now-semi-extensive knowledge of random medicinal herbs, which had only improved after I handed him a new gift from Okaa-san and Otō-san—something that was a mix of a lap-desk and a small chalkboard. It had a writing area on the front that was surrounded by a wooden border, small attached pouches for chalk and an erasing cloth, and cushioning around the back and edges. Ensui-san would draw diagrams of plants on it as he explained their identifying features, where they grew, and their uses.

None of this should have been a problem. Quite frankly, the problem was minor—it was due to my overthinking things and the fact that I had started that list of my favorite people. I’d done away with just my list of favorite visitors, and ended up with a list that had been Okaa-san and Otō-san tied for first, then _hime-san_ , then Ensui-san, then Yamanaka Inoichi-sama, and finally, Mogusa-san. 

However, it meant I couldn't promote Ensui-san any further on my list of favorite people without having him pass _hime-san_ , and therein lay my dilemma. Because while I had been hesitant to put Mogusa-san above Yamanaka-sama, it felt practically _anathema_ to put anyone over _hime-san_.

It was a minor problem—not even that, really—but somehow, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy over it. 

* * *

It turns out, I got a _lot_ of presents. I didn’t realize it, but most of the ones that had arrived had been repurposed as items for the _erabitori_ ceremony—they were in that circle of potentially-prophetic career-themed objects. 

The fan and dolls were a gift from my _Obaa-san_ —Okaa-san’s mom. I had been confused when Okaa-san said I’d met her before, but then I remembered that trip with _hime-san_ , when I’d been really young. There had been a gray-haired old lady… who was probably my grandmother? Whoops. I’d winced internally as I remembered being a bit scared of her, and how I’d clung to _hime-san_. _Sorry, Obaa-san_ , I apologized mentally. 

The sword, bow, and small _samurai_ helmet were gifts from my maternal uncles, _Hiroshi-ojisan_ and _Kichirō-ojisan_. The stuff for that weird arrangement—which turned out to be the Shintō arrangement, plus a set of Buddhist prayer beads—were from other members of Okaa-san’s family, as were the abacus and writing set. They had also sent me a large box of _otoshidama_ —colorful _pochi-bukuro_ envelopes filled with money that would be given to children around the new year. 

The map, trinkets, and dining set-up were from Otō-san’s family— _Sachiya-obasan_ and _Daiki-kun_ , my aunt and cousin. However, the gifts from Otō-san’s family didn’t stop there. Apart from an even larger box of _otoshidama_ , they had “sent” me two horses, gear for the horses, a house, a boat, and weirdly enough, a tree. Specifically, an _ichō_ , which I believe to mean a ginkgo—Otō-san drew out some of the leaves, and ginkgo leaves are pretty distinctive.

Naturally, I received none of those gifts. However, Otō-san assured me that if I wanted to see my _other_ presents, he could arrange something. I wasn’t entirely sure how serious he was—about the idea that his family had actually given me those presents or that he would take me to see them—so I decided to ignore it, at least until my bewilderment abated.

All of the objects made their way onto shelves, hidden beside sliding doors, that were located in the room next to Otō-san and Okaa-san’s—my room, in fact, a detail which felt odd since I rarely spent any time in it.

However, Okaa-san and Otō-san had redecorated, and now, I was about to move in. 

The decoration of the room was similar to the rest of the house—there was wood and rice-paper on the walls and ceiling and cushions along every vertical surface and plush carpets covering the floor. 

Any potential hazards, like the lanterns or wood stove, had been secured or placed well out of my reach.

There was also a new wooden baby crib, which looked almost identical to the one downstairs—the main differences were the wooden bureaus on either side that had drawers full of clothes and various baby supplies.

In a corner, Otō-san and Okaa-san had set up a small writing station for me, complete with another chalkboard and a colorful array of chalk. 

The table and the chalkboard didn’t have padding, which I guessed meant that my parents trusted me a little more not to get into a dangerous accident, but there was nothing sharp—just like with every other piece of furniture in the room, every edge and corner had been sanded down into soft curves. 

Even the boxes scattered around the room matched—they were hollow, rounded wooden cubes that stood at the perfect height for me to use as supports if I wanted to toddle for long distances. Presumably, when I got bigger, these boxes would also function as seats and maybe stepping-stools. 

There were also some that were a bit smaller—probably meant as places to sit. Those were also an ideal size for my exercises—I’d added a few things to my repertoire of previously-only stretches, and the boxes helped with my balance while I worked on my physical ability. I’d almost managed to get down my splits, and the boxes helped now that I started working on over-splits. Also, while I still couldn’t do a backbend unassisted, and my shaky arms meant I couldn’t hold it for long, I was ecstatic that I’d managed one at all. 

The rounded corners and curves of the furniture didn’t quite fit into traditional aesthetics, and they certainly didn’t match the furniture of the rest of the house. However, when I looked at my room, there was a cohesiveness that soothed me. More than that, though, it was what the rather avant-garde style _meant_ that felt like a warm blanket wrapping around me. 

My room just looked like what it was—a room that Otō-san and Okaa-san had carefully prepared just for me. The attention and effort—and, of course, the monetary cost—that must have gone into it was… frankly, absurd. I was just a _baby_. But that seemed to be enough for my parents. 

The realization made me feel warm inside.

* * *

It was nice going outside when the weather warmed into spring.

Okaa-san and Otō-san never put me down—something I was grateful for—and I was quite content to bask in the warm sunlight, surrounded by colorful flowers and gently swaying tree branches and cheerful birdsong.

There was a beautiful variety of plants, and I loved how my parents indulged my desires to look at each and every one. 

I was also very thankful for my clear vision. Having been nearsighted _Before_ and having experienced almost a year of blurry, unfocused vision as a baby, simply being able to _see_ felt like a blessing. I had often bemoaned the hard contacts and soft contacts and the glasses—and the headaches and dry eyes they gave me. But now…

I still couldn’t stop from smiling to myself at times. 

I could _see_.

* * *

Spring passed. That _samurai-_ themed arrangement from last year, with the figures of tigers and fish, was taken out, then put back into storage. One day, I woke up with a larger, even more intricately carved _koi_ fish that had the same inky swirls as my bracelet—and also held more of _hime-san_ ’s chakra. However, _hime-san_ never stopped by again. Or, at least if they did, I didn’t see them. 

Sometimes, when I woke up, I thought I recognized that distinctive scent of bitter herbs lingering around me. But it always faded quickly, and I would wonder if I had simply imagined it.

Soon, it started raining again. Then the rain stopped, and the dampness in the air became more and more apparent as the days became warmer. 

I was growing, too, something that was more apparent this year. When summer came, my eyes were almost above the top of my wooden crib. 

The doodles I drew—my frustratingly-distorted attempts at flowers and leaves and trees and geometric shapes—became smoother and less distorted. 

Okaa-san and Otō-san _finally_ started feeding me solid food. Or, rather, solid food that hadn’t been mashed or puréed. The new sensations, while frustrating, were a relief. I mean, I still gnawed at the clean muslin cloths that Otō-san had used while I was teething. It had partially been out of boredom, but more often, it was because chomping at the slightly-rough fabric felt comforting to me. Even now, with the advent of solid foods, my habits didn’t change.

My vocabulary had also increased. I still wasn’t quite sure how to ask Okaa-san about _hime-san_ ’s bitter-herb smell, but I was more than capable of basic greeting and etiquette. For example, an _itadakimasu_ before starting to eat and a _gochisōsama-deshita_ after finishing. Then, there were everything from a simple _konnichiwa_ when meeting someone to _yōkoso_ and _irasshaimase_ (both meant “welcome,” but the second was for customers to the store) to the time-specific ones—from _ohayō_ or _ohayō gozaimasu_ (both meant “good morning,” but the second version was more polite) to _konbanwa_ in the evening and _oyasumi_ or _oyasuminasai_ before going to bed. 

I could also request specific foods, pronounce the names of the tea in the shop, repeat the names and some descriptions of medicinal herbs back at Ensui-san, and ask my parents—or, usually, Ensui-san—to repeat themselves or read something to me. I also knew how to declare that I was confused about something, which usually led to them repeating themselves or explaining in more detail.

They were at the top of my favorite-people list for a _reason_. 

I’d also more or less managed to get a hang of the many variants of “thank you” and “please” and “I’m sorry”. I used the first two more often than the last one, but they were all rather confusing at first. For example, there seemed to be almost a dozen different ways to apologize, and they all depended on the situation and gravity of the mistake or offense. 

Luckily, I was still a baby—or rather, I supposed, a toddler now—and people didn’t expect perfect etiquette from children my age. Or, at least, I hoped they didn’t. 

Even so, the sheer amount of ways to be polite was a little overwhelming. 

Thankfully, Okaa-san was patient with me when she explained, and she didn’t mind repeating herself. I also usually try to use more _keigo_ , the polite form of the language, even if it’s a bit longer. I mean, it’s probably harder to accidentally offend someone that way, right?

And my hard work seemed to be paying off. However, while I could now pronounce _Yamanaka-sama_ correctly, Yamanaka Inoichi-sama’s visits got shorter. He still spent time talking with Okaa-san and Otō-san, and for that I didn’t move him further down my list of favorite people, but he didn’t have that much time for me. I made sure to greet him, and by name, but while he still stopped by and always patted me on the head before he left, the occasions when he would crouch down and talk to me had decreased. He also didn’t pause to listen to me—and I tried not to take it too seriously, since he was probably busy and Okaa-san and Otō-san didn’t always pause and let me talk, either, but… I did feel a bit dejected. 

However, as a result of my newly-developed vocabulary, I also faced what seemed like the opposite problem—too much attention. Now that I was more vocal, I seemed to become the mascot for the shop, and many older customers made sure to stop by my little station and coo how _cute_ I was, and how _well-behaved_ I was, and… generally irritate me. They meant well, I was sure, but their constant attentions were rather tiring. 

Still, I smiled and waved and laughed and chirped cheerful greetings and generally tried to be as pleasant as possible.

After all, there wasn’t much of a point to being rude in this situation. Their attention helped distract my mind from the humidity, and it also gave me more practice for memorizing names and faces. Besides, the customers tended to stop by more often now that I had started talking… so my small sacrifices weren’t completely without gain. They also sometimes gave me sweets—which I valued less for the simple reason that I couldn’t eat the sweets—but I supposed it was quite very thoughtful of them. 

All in all, I could deal with the attention. 

* * *

The oppressive mugginess didn’t stay for long, thankfully, and the leaves soon started changing colors. They rattled and shook in the warm breezes, and I laughed, clapping, whenever a gust of wind would blow in through an open window or door. 

It was at this time that Okaa-san or Otō-san would take me outside, and I could toddle along the road and spin around under the dappled sunlight and laugh when a puff of wind would mess up my hair.

I loved my newfound mobility, and while Okaa-san and Otō-san never let me stay outside for very long, I treasured every time I could go out. 

It was also around this time that I met someone new.

They had come in on a normal afternoon, and I only remember him because he was so _short_. I could see a _hitai-ate_ on his forehead, so I knew that he was a _shinobi_ , but… he was so short that it felt a little absurd—as if he had been playing dress-up or something. The tiny _shinobi_ also stood out from the crowd—he wore darker colors, which when paired with their dark eyes and hair, looked very different from the brighter colors and warm earth tones of the other customers.

Also, this _shinobi_ was _very short_ , and I feel like I need to reiterate that.

They were barely taller than the handle on the door—it was only around neck-height—and the crowd of adults seemed to swallow him up.

But I probably wouldn’t have remembered him if he hadn’t looked around for a little while… and then decided to walk over to me.

Otō-san was getting more tea from the back to restock the shelves, Okaa-san was helping a customer, and I had been drawing on my little chalkboard, since I wasn’t feeling up to playing cute for the customers—they only flocked around nowadays if I took the initiative to greet them first, and I felt grateful for that. 

It also meant that I was rather surprised when someone walked up and decided to initiate a conversation with me. It wasn’t cutesy baby-talk, either.

“ _Excuse me, but would you know where I might find tea to soothe headaches and stomach upset… ah, an uncomfortable stomach?_ ”

I startled, embarrassed. Technically, I should have greeted him first.

“Ah, _shitsureishimashita, shinobi-san_ ,” I apologized, nodding in a mimicry of a bow—I didn’t have good enough balance for an actual bow. “Um…” 

I mentally processed his request. It… it wasn’t impossible to fulfill. The thing was, there were many options. I frowned, trying to array my vocabulary into something that could convey my meaning to the _shinobi_.

I looked at him, considering. 

“ _Ue?_ ” I asked, hesitantly, reaching out my arms. 

To my surprise, the small _shinobi_ took my request calmly and promptly picked me up, settling me gently in a way that spoke of experience with children. 

“ _Where to?_ ” he asked. 

I thought for a moment. It was probably best to start with the headaches?

I pointed in the direction of the herbal teas. 

* * *

We managed to get there surprisingly quickly, and I asked him to set me down.

“Um, _itai_ ,” I told him, patting my head in an effort to mime a headache—hurt, head—then pointed at various boxes of tea. “Ginger, peppermint, willow bark, clove, feverfew, chamomile.”

Then, I mimed rubbing my stomach. “Ginger, peppermint, chamomile. Holy basil, fennel.”

I looked at the shinobi, making sure he was looking at me. 

“Ginger, peppermint…” I mimed puffing and fanning my mouth. One would feel spicy, the other cold. Someone who was too sensitive to that probably wouldn’t like them. 

“Willow bark, clove, chamomile, holy basil, fennel…” I tried to mime a cut. “ _Ketsu, ie_ ,” I clarified—blood—then shook my head. Teas with any of these could be risky to drink if the person had a cut—willow bark tended to interfere with clotting, and clove could slow the healing. The rest were also bad if combined with any blood thinners or anticoagulants, I remembered, even if I wasn’t as sure why. I’d have to ask Ensui-san.

“Feverfew… _itai_ ,” I pointed at my mouth. Also… uh… I pointed at my stomach. “Feverfew, holy basil, fennel… _aka-chan, ie_.” That one was harder to communicate, but feverfew could cause mouth irritation, and Ensui-san also said it wasn’t good for pregnant women to drink. 

I think that was it?

“ _Ki wo tsukete_ ,” I warned, looking up at _shinobi-san_. I think I covered all of the warnings I could, but allergies could also be pretty serious, and… it was just good to be careful and take precautions.

Tiny- _shinobi_ -san nodded, then dipped into a shallow bow. “ _Dōmo arigatō, Kobayashi-chan_.”

I blinked, then beamed. “ _Yokatta!_ ”

He was interesting, and I was glad that I was able to be of help. 

* * *

The tiny _shinobi_ came in again after that, and I soon grew to enjoy his visits.

He would stop by three times a week to get a plate of _dango_ —small, chewy, bite-sized balls, skewered in stacks of three-to-five—and sit down in the chair that now seemed to permanently reside next to my wooden crib. 

I haven’t managed to eat it, yet, but it definitely looked appetizing. The sweet dessert was made from a blend of rice flour that was mixed with water and kneaded into a dough, sometimes flavored (usually with green tea, or a type of herb called mugwort or _yomogi_ ), shaped into small balls, steamed (or sometimes boiled), cooled, and usually skewered.

It could then be roasted over a charcoal grill (sometimes after being wrapped in _nori_ , dried seaweed, or seasoned with soy sauce), dipped into a syrup (made from soy sauce, starch, and sugar), dusted with _kinako_ (a faintly-sweet, yellowish-beige flour-like topping that was ground from roasted soybeans), or covered in a sweet paste (usually _anko_ , sweet red bean paste, or ground-up sesame, or edamame or walnut). 

Tiny- _shinobi_ -san alternated between the options, but I think he preferred the non-sweet _dango_ —though he also liked the _goma dango_ (the one served with sweet and salty sesame paste), and _kurumi dango_ (the one with walnut paste). 

He wasn’t really like Ensui-san, but he was patient and spoke slowly and listened to me and helped whenever I struggled with piecing together words. It was almost entirely because of him that my fluency with the language increased in leaps and bounds—memorizing vocabulary and phrases wasn’t quite as effective as trying to hold a conversation.

He never stayed that long, but his consistency with his visits was nice. On my list of favorite people, he was quickly catching up with Mogusa-san, the medic-nin with the blank, grey eyes. Of course, that was partially accelerated by the fact that Mogusa-san was also visiting me less.

My check-ups with the medical-nin had gotten less and less frequent over the course of the year, and while Mogusa-san greeted me whenever he stopped by for a cup of tea, he didn’t sit next to me and talk the way Ensui-san and tiny- _shinobi_ -san did. 

I wasn’t sure if I missed the visits—I suppose I did, to some extent, but I still had the bracelet and carved wooden _koi_ fish with _hime-san_ ’s chakra. 

It was more of a slow realization that made me pause and think. So much of my first year had consisted of those visits. Now that they were gone… it felt odd. 

* * *

As the weather got colder, the occasions when Okaa-san or Otō-san would take me outside became more and more infrequent.

However, the time we spent together increased.

Okaa-san began teaching me how to write, and when our storytelling sessions restarted, she would sit me on her lap as she drew the creatures. Sometimes, she would also let me hold the brush, and then guided my hand to draw what she described— _kitsune_ surrounded by balls of foxfire, _kawauso_ —river otter _yōkai_ —standing on their hind legs or floating in the river, a _kappa_ with webbed hands and a turtle’s shell on their back and a dish-like depression on their head that was filled with water. _Ushi-oni_ , cruel ox-headed _yōkai_ that breathed toxic poison, and preyed on humans. _Bakeneko_ , cats that danced on their hind paws and could summon ghostly fireballs—and their more powerful counterparts, _nekomata_ , whose tail had split into two identical tails and were almost always contemptuous of humans. 

Okaa-san told me of how Konohagakure—and then, the other hidden villages—formed from scattered clans of shinobi. How _Hi no Kuni_ , the Land of Fire, had changed over the centuries. How military forces that once only consisted of _samurai_ with their lacquered armor and swords and bows slowly shifted to include _shinobi_. How the _shinobi_ became more powerful, and how the _samurai_ came close to becoming obsolete. How some clans gathered and formed villages, and then those villages sparked hostility. 

She told me of her family— _my_ family—had changed over the centuries. How we had once overseen national rites for the Land of Fire, then slowly became more secular, more involved in the government. How the importance of national rites had lessened, but the clan retained its prominence with merit in more scholarly pursuits.

Otō-san also contributed with his stories, rolling out a map and mapping out the routes he’d traveled, telling me of family members who lived in _this_ city, friends he’d made or heard of that lived around _there_ —a network of family and friends and acquaintances, farms and orchards and quarries and mines and docks and restaurants and shops, that stretched across the continent. 

He described places he’d visited in detail—wide slow-flowing rivers, massive fertile river deltas, steep mountains that rose through damp clouds, spiraling chasms carved into the earth, neat grids of farmland that seemed to stretch to reach the sky, careful-cultivated terraces carved into mountain- and hill-sides, waterways teeming with “cities” of flat-bottomed boats, houses built on stilts over water or carved into faces of solid rock or dug into the ground itself. 

There were countries that didn’t have shinobi—had never heard of hidden villages— and I stared at the map as I realized how _big_ this world was. 

For how big the world was _Before_ , it was also small. There were networks of communications, grids of trains and subways and roads and flights. 

Here… there was none of that. Traveling took weeks, if not months or years. Communication was difficult. Information was limited—hoarded, tucked away—and _precious_. 

I…

I was lucky. _So lucky_. 

I had parents who knew so much, parents who were willing to teach me what they knew. If I had been on my own, if I had been born in different circumstances… would I know that this wider world existed? 

I loved chakra. I knew that much. But… did I want to be a _shinobi?_

I had assumed I would—I hadn’t been aware of other possible options—but now, I wasn’t sure.

That unsettled me. 

* * *

However much I wanted to contemplate my realization, life didn’t wait for me. I ended up at a decision before I managed to think too much—and I felt confused at whether I should feel upset or indignant or outraged… or continue with my odd feeling of bemusement.

I decided on shelving my thoughts. After all, they wouldn’t help me much—what use was it being upset with the _Sandaime Hokage?_

Perhaps I should explain.

The week-or-so after that realization was quite busy, as first came a festival—I think. I hadn’t realized this was what I was hearing last year, but there were white-, silver-, gold-, and purple-colored decorations _everywhere_. Lanterns and candles also seemed important. I could see them out the windows, and the crowd of people seemed to multiply in those few days. The air seemed filled with snippets of songs and jingling bells and people laughing. 

On those days, Okaa-san and Otō-san closed the shop earlier and spent more time with me.

And then, even before the festivities died down completely, Okaa-san and Otō-san seemed to scrub down the entire house in preparation for the new year. They also put up the same decorations as last year—from the two _mochi_ , stacked one over the other, with a tangerine placed on top ( _kagami-mochi_ ), to the _bamboo-pine-plum_ _kadomatsu_ arrangements. 

But this year, when my birthday came, it was with much less fanfare than the previous year, something I was very grateful for. There was no _mochi_ on my back, no circle of objects… it was nice.

The presents I’d gotten included another chalkboard, some more writing utensils, some very nice carved wooden toys, another two boxes stuffed full of _otoshidama_ , and…what assembled into a three-dimensional map of the Land of Fire, with mountains and forests and meadows carved out of wood. 

It wasn’t that big, or that detailed, but it was pretty big and pretty detailed, and of course, it was from my more-distant relatives on Otō-san’s side. So, it was pretty ostentatious, but it wasn’t like the horses and other gifts last year. For one, this gift was _here_ and I could actually hold it and play with it, so I quite liked it. 

Ok, I _really_ liked it. It even came in a nice box!

However, it did remind me of my… recent realization. Part of me wanted to travel. Another part of me wondered if we could get a more-detailed map, and how useful that might be for _shinobi_ stuff. 

And so, I was thankful when Otō-san put it away almost immediately. 

I also liked _hime-san_ ’s gifts—another bracelet, a wooden model of a _koi_ fish in a different pose, a wooden box filled with little satchels of bitter-smelling herbs (that reminded me of _hime-san_ ), a blanket with dyed swirly-patterns, and her gifts from last year, recharged. I was pretty amazed when I felt them—the chakra in those fits had run out some time in the autumn, and while I still treasured them, I was quite sad about the absence of the comforting chakra. After a while, Okaa-san had taken them—and I actually had to remind myself not to throw a tantrum. However, I’d managed to come to grips with their absence, no matter how reluctantly.

And now…

When Okaa-san returned the previous gifts to me, she’d explained that she had given them to _hime-san_ , since _hime-san_ had made them to be recharged. It had taken a bit longer than they expected, but I was always going to get them back.

Frankly, I almost cried while I was hugging Okaa-san. 

But I’m glad I managed to calm down, because afterwards, it was dinner time.

Okaa-san and Otō-san made a fancier meal than normal, and this time, I was actually able to eat it… and _it was amazing_. 

There was _seafood_ for one, and the taste of steamed fish almost brought tears to my eyes. The soup was also really good, as was the _okayu_ (the rice porridge), and there was mashed _kabocha_ squash, so I was having the time of my life. 

But like all good things, the day had to end. 

And the next day, there were _visitors_. Not many, thankfully—it was only three—but…

They were both strangers and disturbingly familiar. 

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel when meeting people I’d known as characters in a story—the ones I’d met so far were unfamiliar enough that I didn’t have many preconceptions of them—but these were _important_ characters.

And frankly, I hadn’t realized I was important enough to meet them in-person. Otherwise, I might have had a plan in place for what I would do if this situation ever happened.

As it was, all I could do was turn around and toddle away frantically, trying not to panic over the fact that at my door stood the man who might as well as have been the dictator of this village, an accompanying _shinobi_ who was equally very-capable-of-killing-us, and the future protagonist of this story. 

* * *

Until I had been not-so-subtly strong-armed into becoming a shinobi, the visit had been rather pleasant.

Yes, I had to get over my realizations—and subsequent panic—that I may have well been in imminent mortal peril, something that was _not_ helped when I remembered that that the shinobi’s uniform (a stylized porcelain mask, black clothing, grey flak jacket, metal arm guards, long gloves, a hooded cloak, and the signature red spiral tattoo on their shoulder) meant that this shinobi was part of ANBU—the name for the skilled _shinobi_ who often took on the village’s darker operations, from assassinations to any other missions that might damage Konoha’s signature “cheerful” and “friendly” reputation. 

However, the ANBU agent was relatively polite, and the fact that they did their best to imitate a statue as they sat quietly in a corner of the room did much to calm my nerves. Similarly, Okaa-san’s cheerful demeanor and evident familiarity towards the Sandaime Hokage also slowed my heart-rate, as did his kindly-older-person aura and the fact that he called her _Kimiko-chan_. How well did they know each other for Okaa-san to be comfortable with such a cutesy nickname? 

That did not mean that I was willing to relax my white-knuckled grip on Okaa-san’s shirt, nor did it mean I was about to actually look the Sandaime Hokage in the eye. 

I tried to tell myself to relax. He probably wasn’t about to hurt me. Okaa-san seemed to like him, and I trusted Okaa-san, right?

But a part of my head pointed out that Otō-san wasn’t in the room, that I didn’t know the Sandaime Hokage, that I had no guarantee what I knew of him would be true, that I had no guarantee what I knew of him would apply to me…

And everything seemed to _freeze_ when I heard the Sandaime Hokage mention a very familiar name.

“Ah, I brought a playmate for Makoto-kun. He isn’t quite awake yet, but I believe that Naruto is only a little older than Makoto-kun? Kimiko-chan…”

Okaa-san laughed, loosened my death-grip on her shirt, and turned me around. 

“Ah, Makoto-kun’s just a little shy today! But I think he should be feeling a bit better now… here, Makoto-kun, why don’t you go say hi to… Uzumaki-kun, wasn’t it?” 

I almost fell from where I stood, but I managed to regain my balance. 

I blinked, staring at the Sandaime. 

He was smiling at me.

I felt very alarmed by that somehow, even as part of me noted that the hair peeking out from under the Hokage hat was brown, not yet the grey it would be. He also didn’t have any of the age spots he would get, later. 

I started, reverting to a phrase that had become very familiar to me over the past few months. 

“ _Irasshaimase!_ ” I chirped, and if my voice was a little higher-pitched than normal… well. No one pointed it out.

I saw Sandaime-sama smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling. 

“Very good, Makoto-kun,” he chuckled. “Though I imagine that isn’t quite right for the circumstances.”

I shoved my anxiety behind the stillness that fell over me. I knew this. I knew what to do.

I looked over at Okaa-san, making my eyes go a little wider and tilting my head to one side.

She smiled, flapping a hand at me to go on.

I look back at Sandaime-sama, eyes still wide and eyebrows raised in the way that I knew could trigger a series of squeals and coos whenever I did it to a crowd of customers in the store. 

“ _Ko-n-ni-chi-wa_ ,” I said, carefully enunciating the syllables. Then, I smiled, eyes slightly squinted in a way that I knew looked absolutely adorable. 

Sure enough, behind me, I heard Okaa-san clap and cheer, “good job, Makoto-kun!” and I gave a gurgling laugh as I turned and reached for her, hands opening and closing in a wordless demand for a hug. It came, along with a kiss on the cheek, and another part of me calmed.

“Makoto-kun is quite clever,” Sandaime-sama commented from behind me, and I internally stilled, even as I kept up with the giggles and smiles.

“Yes… the customers adore him,” Okaa-san laughed, and I relaxed a little, again.

“And no reason why they would not,” the Sandaime agreed. “Unfortunately, Naruto-kun is currently asleep, or else…”

And as if his words had jinxed it, the yellow-haired bundle in his arms squirmed and rolled over, eyes opening. 

“Oh, he woke up!” the Sandaime smiled, and I almost wanted to scream.

* * *

It was worse than I thought. He couldn’t walk—which worried me for a moment, before the Sandaime sighed over the fact—but he crawled with an alarming speed and persistence. 

I couldn’t avoid him—and for that, I mentally decided I would need to practice—and so, I had soon resigned myself to being enthusiastically drooled over by a baby who was… almost as big as I was. But not quite. That fact actually alarmed me. He was older than me, right? The Sandaime had said so. And I wasn’t big for my age. I knew that much from eavesdropping on the customer’s comments and some of Okaa-san’s conversations. 

So…why wasn’t he bigger than me?

I placed a hand on the baby’s face, shoving him back enough that I could get a better look. 

Blue eyes, yes. Whisker-marks that seemed tattooed on his cheeks? Quite obvious really. And as for that yellow-blonde hair, you’d have to be blind to miss it. 

I promptly got up and flopped over onto him, trying to use my weight to keep him still as I continued poking. He didn’t _seem_ too thin or anything… but he was small. He was strong, and he had enough energy that I felt exhausted just looking at him, but he was definitely smaller than me.

I poked at him again, aiming for his cheeks this time. Then, I tried pulling at his hair—okay, that was not as soft as it should be, and that didn’t seem good.

I realized something else, that made me still.

He was too _quiet_.

I was a special case, I knew that. But I’ve known babies before, and although I didn’t really remember how they behaved when they were this young… I was pretty sure babies older than 18 months were supposed to be vocalizing and using at least a few words. And he was at least 24 months. But he _wasn’t_. 

I poked him again, a little harder, this time in the sides. Then, I tried tickling his feet—it was pretty hard, with how much he was flailing and my limited fine-motor-control, but I think I managed—but… 

_Nothing_.

At this point, I was getting pretty upset. Because _what was happening?_ In the story, we hadn’t really gone into the main character’s early life. There’d been fan theories, but some had bordered on ridiculous, and… and _surely_ the Sandaime Hokage would know, would realize something was wrong? 

I almost growled, and I slumped for a moment, before kicking and punching at the carpet under us.

What was _wrong_ with the Sandaime? He’d had kids, I knew that much. And I _wanted_ to like him—he’d been likable as a character—but… 

Two hands grabbed me under my arms, and lifted me up, and I tried to bite at them because right now? I was pretty upset. 

“Calm down, _koinu-kun_ ,” the ANBU muttered, and I almost snarled at them—as it was, I knew my face contorted for a moment, and I didn’t _care_ —

I huffed, swatting at their mask.

“Okay… let’s see…” 

I tried again, and the ANBU dodged, but I managed to knock back their hood.

I paused, staring at the newly-revealed hair. It was grey—no, silver—and spiked upwards, leaning slightly to one side. It was also really familiar. When combined with what he’d just called me— _koinu-kun_ , little dog or puppy—I had a sneaking suspicion I knew who this was.

“Why are you so _aggressive?_ ” the ANBU sighed, pulling their hood back up. “Look, _gaki_ —” 

I frowned at that form of address.

“—ok, _koinu-kun_ —”

I stopped frowning. 

“—dammit, I wish Genma were here instead. Look, I can’t let you attack that kid. Okay? So why don’t you just…” 

The ANBU tried to set me down and push me at Okaa-san, but I just stopped, turned, and continued staring at him. 

“ _Gaki? Koinu?_ Look… here. _Sit_. Come on, _sit_.” 

He even tried to push down on my shoulder slightly. 

Bemused, I tilted my head for a moment… then decided to sit.

“Ok,” the ANBU sighed. “Now… _stay_.”

He backed away slowly, heading towards the yellow-haired protagonist still lying on the ground—okay, maybe that was a bit worrying—but I decided to cut the guy a break. Besides, I found this scenario rather entertaining. 

The ANBU picked up the protagonist, and I saw that the other baby’s face was screwed up, as if he wanted to cry, but he _still wasn’t making noise_.

I decided this was enough, and stood up again, toddling over to yank at the ANBU’s clothing. 

He looked down, still holding the other baby in front of him, at eye level, and I realized that this guy had _no idea_ how to deal with kids.

“Up,” I demanded, holding out my arms. 

Looking at me, then at the protagonist, then back at me, the ANBU slowly set the other baby down, where he stayed sitting, then picked me up.

I pointed imperiously at the baby. “Baby. Silent. Why?”

I waited for that shinobi to realize I was asking why the protagonist wasn’t speaking. I was more than capable of asking the question as a complete, grammatically-correct sentence, but I wasn’t about to do that here. 

The ANBU frowned, staring at me, then looked at Naruto… then back at me. 

“You’re… asking why he’s… oh.”

The ANBU shook me a bit, as if trying to recalibrate a clock, and I glowered at him.

“Sandaime-sama?” he called, and I looked over as the Sandaime, who had been engrossed in conversation with Okaa-san, looked up—and blinked. 

It made sense, it probably made for the rather odd scene.

“ _Ryōken_ ,” Sandaime-sama said firmly, obviously wondering why the ANBU had interrupted.

“When… should babies begin speaking?” the ANBU asked, still staring at me.

I saw Okaa-san start, looking between us. “Oh! Makoto-kun started a little late, but he started making noises around three months. He started speaking quite quickly, though.”

“Okaa-san,” I called. “Baby. Yellow. Silent. Why?"

Okaa-san’s eyes widened as she walked over, and I knew she saw the other baby’s unvocalized distress. “Sandaime-sama? Maybe… you should consider having an _iryō-nin_ check over Uzumaki-kun? I understand it has been… a while since you last raised a child, but it would be… a bit worrying if Uzumaki-kun were distressed but still remained silent.”

The Sandaime seemed startled, and I was just getting more upset at him now. 

“Oh, well… I suppose we should…” 

“Down,” I barked at the ANBU, and wiggled furiously until he set me down, at which point I ran over to the protagonist and began poking repeatedly at his face, trying to demonstrate to the Sandaime that the _baby wasn’t making any noises_. He struggled to get away, obviously, but he remained absolutely silent. 

“ _No_ ,” the ANBU sighed, blocking my hand. “No. Drop it. Good… now, _sit_.”

Begrudgingly, I sat. 

“ _Iiko_ ,” he muttered, fumbling in a pocket for a moment before crouching down and patting me on the head. “Good… good baby. Good baby.”

I tilted my head. Wow, this guy was _awkward_. 

I squinted as I stifled a yawn, then lay down, letting my eyes droop. This was quite nice, actua—

I frowned as a shadow blocked the light in front me, and opened my eyes.

Surprise, surprise, the Sandaime was there in front of me.

I went limp as he picked me up, grumpily refusing to cooperate in the most passive-aggressive way I had the energy for. 

I was a bit happier when he handed me over to Okaa-san. 

And then that immediately changed when he promptly asked, “Kimiko-chan? Have you ever thought about letting Makoto become a shinobi?”

Okay, so he was doing that. I might have regretted showing off my intelligence— _might have_ —if it hadn’t been under the previous circumstances, and if I hadn’t already watered it down as much as I could while still making sure to get my point across. I absolutely wasn’t regretting letting Okaa-san and the ANBU realize that there was something off about the protagonist—a _baby_. And this way, if the Sandaime didn’t do anything to fix the problem? I’d know it wasn’t because he didn’t know about it.

As it was, I sighed at the Sandaime’s persistence. And his low standards, if what I’d shown was enough to impress him. Though again… 

“Makoto-kun is a very clever child—rather advanced for his age. I might even call him a prodigy. He would be able to make friends around his own age at the Academy, and it would also…”

I let the words drone on.

Sorry, Okaa-san, Otō-san. I tried. 

I wondered if the Sandaime would forget… it was possible, I supposed, but I knew the more likely outcome. 

Oh, well. Guess I knew what I’d be doing in the future. 

* * *

Across a mountain stream

There is a woven barrier

Built by the busy wind

Of maple leaves

Powerless to flow away.

— Harumichi no Tsuraki

* * *

山川に

風のかけたる

しがらみは

流れもあへぬ

紅葉なりけり

— 春道列樹

* * *

_Yama kawa ni_

_Kaze no kaketaru_

_Shigarami wa_

_Nagare mo aenu_

_Momiji nari keri_

_— Harumichi no Tsuraki_

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

_In the peaceful light_

_Of the ever-shining sun_

_In the days of spring,_

_Why do the cherry's new-blown blooms_

_Scatter like restless thoughts?_

* * *

The day after the Hokage visited, I woke up in a bad mood. It was weird. 

The day was lovely, there were fluffy blankets of snow lining the streets and roofs, and when I opened the window shutters, the morning sunlight gleamed through the hanging icicles. However, I felt… irritable. 

Over the night, my anxiety and worry had somehow fermented into grumpiness. I was upset and confused and somehow, incensed. But mainly? I felt like I was a breath away from snapping at everyone. Or throwing a tantrum, complete with waterworks. It might have been both. I wasn’t sure.

I managed to persuade Okaa-san and Otō-san to let me stay in my room—I didn’t really feel much up to dealing with people. Otō-san seemed a little worried, and I wasn’t sure how to describe Okaa-san’s expression as anything other than… sad, maybe, but they let me stay upstairs.

I wrapped myself in my new blanket from _hime-san_ and grabbed the _bitter-herb_ -smelling box, as well as the fish and bracelets, before clambering onto the bench under the open window. I curled up in one corner, letting myself sink into that bright warmth and gentle undulations of the chakra inside me. 

I ended up drifting off, also lulled by _hime-san_ ’s chakra—but I seemed to only close my eyes a second before I woke up to a slightly frosty breeze in my face.

I blinked, still half-asleep, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was…

I focused my gaze on the other side of the windowsill. 

There, on the wooden ledge, sat a small box—a two-layered _bento_ , probably, wrapped in a _furoshiki_ handkerchief with little paw-prints all over it. 

I stared at the paw-prints, wondering. 

I immediately thought of a person, but… why would they bring me a lunchbox? I looked around, but no one was there. Or, at least, I didn’t see anyone. With _shinobi_ , you could never quite tell. 

I poked at the little “ears” of the tied _furoshiki_ for a moment, then carefully untied the loose knot. 

Huh. That was a surprise.

On the smooth wooden surface sat an _otoshidama_. It was just plain paper, and about as decorative as the basic _bentō_ box—there weren’t any decorations, and it wasn’t even sealed, but… I smiled. It was a nice gesture. 

Turning it over, I looked at the open flap, and carefully slid out the paper. There was only a one- _ryō_ coin inside, but there was also a note. 

I frowned at the round _hiragana_ , trying to remember the sounds associated with the characters. There weren’t that many, so I knew I could figure it out, but… I signed. Unlike _kanji_ , which was character-based, _hiragana_ and _katakana_ were phonetic, which helped. However, unfortunately, that didn’t mean they were any easier for me to understand.

I ended up hopping off my seat and dragging over a sheet of paper, on which I’d scribbled a reference grid with the _kana_ inside. I hadn’t labeled the sounds with alphabetic characters, mostly out of worry that someone would see it, but I’d gotten pretty good at remembering how I’d organized the grid. 

“ _ko-i-nu-ku-n_ ,” I sounded, matching the _hiragana_. So, this present _was_ from the ANBU. But… why? 

“ _i-i-ko_ ,” I continued. That’s what he’d said yesterday—good boy. And there, at the end. That wasn’t a _kana_ , but… a _henohenomoheji_ , a face drawn with hiragana characters. I huffed, a smile flitting across my face. 

Now, I was even more certain about the ANBU’s identity, even if I wasn’t about to tell it to anyone.

I looked around again, wondering. 

“ANBU-san?” I called, lightly. I watched, listening for a rustle of leaves or maybe cloth against wood. 

There was nothing. 

“Ryōken-san?” I tried. Still nothing. I sighed. “ANBU-san, _arigatō_ ,” I called one more time, then hopped off the window sill with my new present, smiling. 

I set the _bentō_ onto a table, before flopping down in front of it. I carefully lifted the first box from the second… then took off the lid. 

I stared at the inside, bemused.

In one compartment, there were little balls of equally-sized plain white _mochi_ , arranged with precision. In the other, a stack of _nori_ —dried seaweed.

I thought back to the note, then about what I’d learned of ANBU yesterday.

If I didn’t know better… I would have guessed that these were his equivalent of dog treats.

I stared at the box, wondering.

It made sense. 

But… surely…

I groaned silently, dropping my face into my hands. 

ANBU-san… ANBU-san… how were you so _bad_ at dealing with children?

I held a hand over my mouth, shoulders shaking with silent laughter. 

ANBU-san… 

I shook my head, smiling helplessly. 

That poor, poor soul. 

I hopped back to the window, beaming as I threw open the shutters again and leaned out.

“ANBU-san, _arigatō gozaimasu!_ ” I called again, louder this time, and I laughed gleefully as I slid back down, closing the shutters as I went. 

There was still an uneasy tangle of emotions, but it was buried somewhere under my current cheer.

* * *

I almost caused my parents a heart-attack when I walked into the front of the shop. It wasn’t unwarranted—the stairs had been pretty intimidating, even if I’d managed to cobble together something similar to a sled with a spare sheet I didn’t mind treating roughly, a jacket, and a cushion. It had actually been a rather fun, albeit bumpy, ride down. 

As it was, there’d been a new rush of customers, and Otō-san quickly picked me up and deposited me in the crib while Okaa-san went to greet the customers. 

I curled up with my new blanket, relishing in the warmth of the chakra. I’d left my bracelets and model _koi_ upstairs, but I didn’t mind their absence as I listened happily to the chatter of people in the shop. 

That one grandmother was talking to her friend about her grandchildren. A young mother laughed with her friends about her new baby. There was an old man in a corner grumbling happily about how his children kept on worrying about his health. Another huddle of old ladies chattered about presents. 

It was… nice. Soothing. 

I let my eyes close, reaching for that bright bundle of chakra, gently guiding it to flow faster through the channels, warming me and further pushing away my bad mood from the morning. 

I mentally traced the pathways. The _tenketsu_ , little nodes where chakra could be released, seemed to itch, and I poked at them, curiously. It wasn’t easy to try and locate them on me, but they were hard to miss when I circulated my _chakra_. They’d been itching more and more recently, and I could only try and circulate my chakra faster in a vain attempt to “itch” them from the inside. 

It wasn’t just my _tenketsu_ , though. Recently, I had taken to playing with the flow of my chakra—speeding it up, sometimes trying to slow it or halt it completely. It couldn’t seem to reverse, but the other options were all fair game. Whenever I tried to stop it, it felt like I was stretching a muscle. It had hurt a little, in the beginning, and holding it too long felt like trying to go too far on my split too quickly, but the stretch in my chakra pathways felt _nice_. 

By now, if I didn’t do it often enough, my channels seemed to… itch, or stiffen, or ache. It wasn’t quite a sensation, but I wasn’t sure how else to describe it. It felt a little like the way I did whenever I went too long without stretching—just… uncomfortable. 

But I’d learned, and now I tried to be constant with my exercises.

However… I supposed that I had slacked off a little in recent days. Maybe that had something to do with my bad mood?

I suppose it was worth thinking about, and potentially exploring. 

But for now, I had a task to focus on. 

* * *

The next time I was distracted, I could tell from the sunlight that it was later—around early afternoon. I frowned, trying to see what had woken me up…

Ah. 

Next to me, a small dark-haired shinobi perched on a chair with a plate of _dango_. 

“ _Shinobi-kun!_ ” I greeted, excited. “ _Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu!_ ” 

“Kobayashi-kun,” tiny shinobi-san looked up, greeting me. He stood up, setting the half-finished plate of _dangō_ on his chair as he fumbled in his _shinobi_ pouch for something—an _otoshidama_ , with a stylized red sunrise on the _pochi-bukuro_ envelope. 

“ _Shinnen omedetō_ ,” tiny shinobi-san nodded, in a shallow bow. “ _Kotoshi mo yoroshiku onegaishimasu_.”

I laughed, accepted the _otoshidama_ with a bobbed bow. “ _Ie, ie_ ,” I laughed, waving off the formalities. Tiny shinobi-san was always so formal! But I suppose part of the joy of festivities were the greetings and responses. _Congratulations on the dawning (of the new year)_ and _please treat me well this year, too_. 

“ _Arigatō gozaimasu, shinobi-kun_. _Kotoyoro!_ ” I reverted to the more casual form of the greeting, grinning cheekily. 

Tiny shinobi-kun huffed slightly, but shrugged. 

“It was no trouble,” he replied, in response to my thanks. “It would have been rude of me, otherwise.”

I shrugged, still smiling and bouncing slightly on my toes. 

“Shinobi-kun, you’re always too polite!” I laughed through a current surge of nerves. “And… if it isn’t too forward of me… I’ve realized that you come here quite often, but…”

I took a deep breath and just decided to go for it, bowing lower than I did before as I finally introduced myself—hopefully, not too late. “ _Watashi wa Kobayashi Makoto desu. Makoto to yonde kudasai_.”

I tried not to hyperventilate as I waited for tiny shinobi-san’s response. I sincerely hoped I didn’t overstep anything by asking tiny shinobi-san to call me by my first name, since that was usually reserved for closer friends. Tiny shinobi-san was the first person on my “favorite people” list who was close to me in age, but I didn’t know if—

“ _Boku no namae wa Uchiha Itachi desu_ ,” tiny shinobi-san interrupted. “ _Itachi to yonde kudasai, Makoto-san_.”

I looked up, startled, before I started beaming. It was a heartbeat later that the name struck me, but I managed to shove it aside almost before it managed to fully settle in. 

_-san_ was considerably more formal—and thus, more distant—than _-kun_ , but I appreciated the indication of Itachi-san’s regard, even if I felt awkward at someone addressing me so respectfully. 

“Itachi-san!” I cheered, smiling so widely that I let my eyes close for a moment. 

I’d have my mental meltdown over his identity later. Right now, my new friend took precedence.

* * *

I kept procrastinating my mental breakdown. Rather, while I tried to have it later, the emotions just… didn’t come. It was like they were stuck, blockaded somewhere behind an enormous dam that was probably labeled “MY FRIEND” in all-caps. 

I was very aware that in the relatively-near future, a cumulation of things would lead to my new friend killing almost everyone in his clan, traumatizing his beloved little brother, and then leaving the village for a short life that would end by attempted suicide via little brother.

I was also very certain that I was not willing to let that happen. 

I decided to save the “how” for later. I was aware that I had a very short deadline. I was two years old, Naruto—the protagonist—was a little older than me… and I think Sasuke, the soon-to-be-traumatized little brother, was a little older than him. 

Which meant I probably had under three years to fix the problem. 

_Huh_. 

That was…. going to be a challenge.

I supposed it was a good thing I decided on becoming a shinobi? After all, it would be rather hard to prevent a tragedy if I stuck to the level of development expected from a civilian five-year-old. Whereas there was technically a precedent for six-year-old genin in Konohagakure.

Ok. Baby steps. First… I supposed I should figure out how to write. And read. 

* * *

Learning _hiragana_ and _katakana_ sucked. Trying to memorize _kanji_ was… actually marginally better. But only marginally. And trying to write sentences with _kanji_ definitely confused me. 

For one, there’s actually two pronunciations of _kanji_ — _onyomi_ and _kunyomi_. For another, there were _so many homonyms_. But worst of all? Even math here wasn’t like the math _Before_ —they didn’t use Arabic numerals. _Before_ , that system of counting had been… pretty much universal. Math was math. 

But that was no longer the case, because here, numbers were represented by _kanji_. 

That realization almost caused me the mental breakdown I thought I’d sidestepped. Because… _because_. When I’d learned about the new numeric systems, I’d actually waited until I was alone, then flopped on my bed and screamed into my pillow. Repeatedly. 

Because... just... _what_. 

At one point, the combination of everything almost literally drove me up the wall. 

Almost. Not quite. I wasn’t quite motivated enough to actually crawl up with chakra, but when I had to take a break from sheer frustration, I did find using chakra to be very effective in calming me down.

After a little while of poking around, I’d managed to output chakra from my _tenketsu_. Or, at least I thought I’d figured out how to do it. I might have been doing something wrong. I wasn’t entirely sure. But it seemed to work for me, so I was happy.

One of the things I had figured out relatively quickly was the ability to stick to things. I couldn’t do it consistently, but I was optimistic. 

As it was, I had taken to sticking a scrap of paper onto various parts of my body and trying to keep it stuck there for as long as I could. 

So far, I hadn’t managed to keep it stuck for very long, even while concentrating. The moment my mind slipped, so did the paper scrap.

But whenever that became frustrating, I went back to studying _kanji_. 

And whenever I was frustrated with both of them, something that had begun happening more and more?

I exercised. 

Honestly, if anyone had been in the room, I would have felt a lot more self-conscious, because I _felt_ like a fool. For one, I was really bad at everything, especially in the beginning. 2-year-olds are not particularly well-coordinated.

For another, doing squats and lunges and leg-raises and push-ups and planks and leg-lifts and crunches and sit-ups and and heel-raises and just holding your arms out in random positions and occasionally moving them around does not make anyone look particularly sane. Okay, the first few might. Definitely not the last ones, however, especially without weights or at a ballet barre. They were important for certain muscle groups, but I also did not want anyone watching me while I did them.

My embarrassment was never strong enough to discourage me, however, and it faded the more I tried to force my body through the exercises.

I didn’t start off very seriously—my form was probably terrible, and my various muscle groups either refused to cooperate or didn’t seem to feel the strain they should have. However, things improved. 

Everything improved. It wasn’t quick, but they did.

It helped that I wasn’t alone. 

Itachi-san offered his assistance by introducing me to the words more applicable for _shinobi_. One day, he’d actually shown up with his old Academy textbook (which was actually printed, to my surprise), and insisted that I take it. I’d instinctively tried to refuse, but he assured me that it wasn’t of any use to him, and lending it to me for a time would be of no inconvenience, whatsoever. He didn’t specify a time frame, but after that, I couldn’t really refuse without being rude. However, I did ask Otō-san and Okaa-san if they could give him a discount for anything he ordered, though, because it made me feel better about the indefinite loan. 

Ensui-san probably introduced me to the most varied range of characters, with _kanji_ that described everything from the stamen of a flower to the specific identifications of a certain fish to all of the different characteristics of maladies, some more localized than others. 

Mogusa-san, after a little wheedling, also showed me the characters for parts of the body—more specific than Ensui-san’s, but also more complicated. I quite enjoyed the impromptu biology lessons, even if he still tried to dumb them down too much. 

Even Yamanaka-san sometimes took the time to list off a few species of flowers whenever he dropped by. 

It was quite amazing to realize how quickly I could learn something when I devoted all of my time to it.

By the times the rains arrived, around early _satsuki_ — _gogatsu_ , the fifth month (May)—I’d managed to cram enough _kanji_ into my head to stumble through some of Okaa-san and Otō-san’s books and scrolls—usually journals, but there was a rather eclectic collection of topics. It was harder since they were all hand-written, but it wasn’t too bad in the daylight. The fact that they were hand-written did slow me down, though. 

I couldn’t help but wonder if libraries were a thing, here. 

I rather hoped they were.

* * *

When the rains ended, I decided I really needed to get out more.

While the customers of the tea store provided me insight into how the rest of the village was, I wanted to get more of a first-hand experience. And while neither Okaa-san nor Otō-san felt comfortable with me going outside by myself yet (another year, they promised—Konohagakure was safe, but they wanted to make sure that my health stayed okay and that I could take care of myself and that I wouldn’t get hurt), they were happy to take me to some of playground parks in Konoha. There were about three of them, I think.

Otō-san actually drew me a rough map of the village on a chalkboard, and to my surprise, Konohagakure’s layout was actually fairly straightforward. 

It helped that it was hard to get disoriented. The giant Hokage faces carved into the cliff overlooking Konoha, and they were visible from almost anywhere in the village. They faced west, and the cliff they were carved into ran north-south. It meant they looked really amazing in the morning, when the sun rose from behind them, as well as in the early evening, when the setting sun seemed to dye the rocks a soft golden-orange. In fact, I’d guess that given their elevation, the best place to watch the beautiful sunsets would be from the top of the cliff, right above the Hokage faces.

The Main Street of Konohagakure ran from outside the village, though the center of Konohagakure, and separated into two streets just beyond the Hokage Tower in a T-junction. 

According to Otō-san, it was the only way to get in—in a spooky tone, he told me that anyone who tried to get in from elsewhere, unless they were very determined, would simply… disappear into the dense forests surrounding the village on all sides. I’d just sighed and promised I wouldn’t go too far from the main village, which seemed to make him feel better.

Konohagakure was surrounded by forest, but the actual city was located in a bit of a valley, with how it was surrounded by hills and cliffs. There was a river, the Naka river, that forked a little ways behind the Hokage Monument into two separate streams that flowed around Konohagakure. The older districts in Konoha were to the north, and they were mainly _shinobi_ residential areas and training grounds for the smaller clans, as well as non-clan shinobi. The original, larger clans got more space along the northern branch of the river, because they had originally served a bit as the first line of defense for the village. Nowadays, since Konoha had expanded, that was no longer the case—but while there were grounds on the other side of the river, they were mostly empty training grounds. 

On the other side of the Main Street, to the south… well, the area was originally occupied almost entirely by the Akimichi clan, one of the five noble clans of Konohagakure, and its smaller allied clans—the Nara and Yamanaka. This area was now considered the civilian side, since it was mostly full of civilian businesses, but it was also a bit more spread-out, compared to the other side. A little further away from the center of Konoha were the clan districts—most of the clans along this border were those that needed space—for example, the Nara clan lived close to the outskirts because they had a forest for their deer, and the Inuzuka had a smaller tract of land for their dogs. 

Farther away from the Hokage faces, on both sides of the Main Street, the land eventually turned to civilian-run farms, even if they kept their houses and buildings close to the street. 

However, Konoha imported most of its staples, albeit from relatively nearby—maybe a day away, a week at maximum, even for civilians. There were also, apparently, quite a few D-ranks dedicated to just importing food and staples to maintain the village. 

An interesting thing was that there weren’t many grocery stores. Farmers usually came in during the day with their crops and set up a stall along one of the few streets deliberately made for that purpose. Any shops that served food had a direct arrangement with farmers or merchants to source what they needed. 

I mean, I guess it made sense, but it was definitely very different from what I’d known. 

The playground that Okaa-san and Otō-san usually took me to was almost in the center of Konoha, relatively close to the Hokage Tower—the large, easily-recognizable building that Okaa-san told me served as both the Academy and the administrative hub of the village. It even contained the Hokage’s office, which was something I was very surprised to hear. 

The playground consisted of a play structure, a sandpit, some benches, and a small park, all tucked neatly between larger buildings.

The other playground I liked was a little further away, also on the south-side of Konoha—it had more trees and bushes and was generally quieter. However, it was also further away, and the fewer people meant that I couldn’t exactly continue my goals of people-watching. And eavesdropping, but… I wasn’t exactly _creepy_ about it or something. 

And it was really, _really_ useful for getting information. 

…I wasn’t defending myself well, was I? 

But it did help.

Somewhat. 

It was quite interesting, though, how they talked about the Uchiha. Technically, they were talking about the _Konoha Keimu Butai_ —the Military Police—but they seemed to conflate the two. 

One woman had mentioned that her nephew was arrested—I didn’t catch all of the details, but she mentioned that the Uchiha had broken his arm. Her friend had then gasped eagerly and whispered all about how _apparently_ , a few weeks ago, one of the Uchiha had taken away a friend of a friend—who hadn’t done anything, according to her—after a fight, and they had been bleeding from the head, but no one did anything about it and they hadn’t been seen since. She went on about how worried her friend was, how _friendly_ and _helpful_ that poor person had been, how they had been curious and loved taking walks around the village and always introduced themselves to their neighbors with home-made dishes, and how outrageous it was that no one did anything about it!

Her friend agreed, and I’d actually winced as their conversation turned into complaints about the Military Police, mocking insults about the Uchiha clan, and general scorn for them. 

_Ouch_. 

The thing was… police brutality had also been an issue _Before_. I might have been horrified, when I was still the teenager who lived in a more peaceful world. (That was a lie. The world wasn’t peaceful—the conflicts were just shoved away from attention, because no one liked thinking about them. And I wouldn’t have been horrified about the broken arm. I would have sighed and listened and made sure to take precautions to protect myself, maybe, but horrified? That was a laugh. Even _Before_ , I’d known that the world wasn’t perfect.) 

But in this world, my reaction to hearing that someone had been killed—with apparently no consequences—was to scoff. And then, feel sorry for the Uchiha.

It probably helped that I knew where this animosity would lead. But more than that… I’d _read_ the textbook (which I now suspected I probably wasn’t technically allowed to read), and _shinobi_ weren’t allowed to randomly assault civilians. Even just accidentally injuring a civilian in Konohagakure would usually result in fairly severe reprimands and punishments. I doubted that it would be any different for the Military Police.

I didn’t mean to excuse things, but… information wasn’t exactly widely disseminated in this world. 

For the first, the Uchiha in question probably _was_ reprimanded—provided that the injured nephew was indeed a civilian. If he were a _shinobi_... well. As for the injured-and-now-missing "friend"... if _nothing_ happened—no checkups, no investigating _shinobi_ , nothing—I rather suspected that there had been something about the mess that had been kept from the civilians. And based on the woman’s descriptions of the friend of the friend… 

I couldn’t help but wonder if they had been a spy.

And I couldn’t help but wonder why Konoha hadn’t explained. (A small part of me suspected I already knew the answer. I tried to ignore it.)

* * *

The knowledge was depressing. 

And I wasn’t sure what I could do about it. The only Uchiha I knew was Itachi-san, and while I felt confident that no regular customer of our shop thought that negatively about him, I did hear gossip, now that I was listening to it. They quieted whenever Itachi passed by, and they weren’t antagonistic towards him—only occasionally silent, as if he was going to tattle on them to someone in the Uchiha Military Police and they would then get into trouble. 

I’d tried making my interactions with Itachi-san more obvious and public—nowadays, whenever he visited, I insisted on bringing the textbook and two small chalkboards over to a table right in the middle of the civilian section, and then i might ask him to write the character for “cat” or draw a duck in a deliberately loud, bright voice.

Slowly, the customers became more used to him—and more friendly with him, as they occasionally stopped by and cooed over how cute I was and how nice “Uchiha-kun” was. They still tended to be more polite, but as the weeks went on, I could almost feel them relax. 

However, I also knew that it was at least partially thanks to his age, and also that any positive feelings about him would probably not be extended to his clan. 

They might think about the Military Police and then think about the Uchiha clan and maybe remember Itachi-san, but they’d also likely brush him off as an exception. 

And I didn’t know the Military Police or the Uchiha clan well enough to write that assumption off as a falsehood. It might have actually been true. 

For Itachi-san’s sake, I hoped not. 

* * *

As I spent more time in the parks, however, I also got to know more kids. 

Most were… well, normal. They were loud, noisy, easily excitable—and _boring_. I could play with them, but I quickly lost interest. And some of the larger kids were just mean. After I considered responding in kind—and dismissed it because of how easy it would be to get blamed—I’d quickly figured out how to use the watching parents to help me. 

I’d also learned how to cry at the drop of a hat—and use that, combined with body language and rudimentary acting, to garner sympathy.

As it was, the older kids quickly learned not to pick on me, or even on other kids while I was there. 

I’d also gained a reputation among the adults for being kind, and more delicate, but also rather brave. As it turns out, small, stifled, hiccuping sobs and a painfully bad lie—as if I were trying to cover up what _everyone_ knew actually happened—earned a lot more sympathy than full-out bawling. It was kind of amusing. 

It did get tiring, though, so I started going to that quieter park more and more often. 

It was there that I met someone... _interesting_. 

I had been sprawled over a warm rock by the small pond, watching under a large tree and hidden from sight by a few bushes. 

I had found a few dragonflies by the pond, but they weren’t what I was watching that time. 

I was staring at a large spider-web that was just a few steps away—I had come across a large spider in the middle of weaving its web, and with the way the golden afternoon sunlight gleamed off the strands of spider-silk, I found myself entranced. 

A twig _snapped_ somewhere nearby, and I jolted, turning quickly to look for the source of the noise.

“Ah… _shi—shitsurei desu_ ,” the child apologized, and I blinked.

The other child was taller than me, but not by much. He actually seemed around my age. I couldn’t see much identifying about him—he was wearing a high-collared shirt under a greenish-beige hooded jacket—but that, combined with the dark sunglasses, reminded me of someone.

I already knew I was around the protagonist’s age…

“Ah, no worries!” I waved it off, speaking quietly. “I’m Kobayashi Makoto, by the way. I was just watching the spider over there spin a web.”

I could almost feel the other kid’s surprise.

“I… my name is Aburame Shino,” he murmured. “Could I…”

He waved towards the spider, and I smiled, sitting up and moving to clear some space on the rock, in case he wanted to sit there. “Sure! I don’t mind.”

After he had settled down on a nearby rock, I let the silence hang for a little while before shifting. 

“Aburame-kun,” I asked. “I was curious, do you also like spider-webs?”

He fidgeted a little, but answered honestly. “I… I enjoy… studying insects.”

“Cool!” I beamed, still making sure I didn’t speak too loudly. “Did you know, I actually saw some dragonflies flying around this pond a feel days ago? I really want to come back in a few weeks—I’m hoping there’ll be more dragon flies. They’re so pretty!”

I could almost feel the other kid watching me, and I made sure not to fidget. He was _interesting_ , and I liked interesting.

“Um.” He nodded. “Dragonflies are very colourful.”

“I’m glad you think so,” I giggled. “I don’t like spiders as much, but I enjoy watching them from a distance. Their webs are also really pretty.” 

Aburame-kun nodded, slowly. “Many people find spiders… intimidating.”

We stared at the spider spinning its web for a little longer, before I spoke up, again.

“Ne, Aburame-kun,” I asked. “If you like studying insects, do you know what type of spider that is?”

Aburame-kun pushed up his glasses. 

“Technically… spiders are not insects. However, I do also enjoy studying spiders. I think that one is a _jorō-gumo_. It is a type of golden orb-weaver. You can tell it is an adult female by how it has yellow and dark blue stripes, with red towards the rear of the abdomen. Also, it is hard to tell, but the thread she is spinning is slightly golden-colored.”

“Wow, that’s cool!” I replied. “And isn’t _jorōgumo_ also a type of _ayakashi_? I’m guessing that was named after the spider?”

Aburame-kun tilted his head slightly. “I… I am not sure.”

I shrugged, still smiling. “I’ll ask Okaa-san later, then. If you’re here tomorrow, I’ll let you know!”

I threw out the idea nonchalantly, but my heart hammered in my chest. I did want to continue talking with Aburame-kun, but if he didn’t take up that offer…

“I… I believe I would enjoy that,” Aburame-kun responded, sounding so confused that I wanted to give him a hug.

“Then, I’ll see you tomorrow,” I decided, flopping back down onto my stomach. “I don’t have to go just yet, though. Did you say that the thread was golden?”

“Yes. I… am not sure why, but it is.”

“Wow,” I sighed. An idea hit me. “That would be really cool if people could make stuff with spider-silk the way they do with silkworms.”

“It would be hard to harvest, since spiders often produce sticky thread, but they do also produce non-sticky thread, and…”

* * *

Over the next few weeks, I became better friends with him, and our acquaintance-ship managed to evolve into a first-name basis. 

Shino-san was a really interesting source of information about insects—some I’d known, but a lot that I hadn’t. 

For example, “dragonfly” was usually referred to as _tonbo_ , but they could also be called _akitsu_ or _katsumushi_. 

He also showed me his _kikaichū_ , a type of insect used by members of the Aburame clan that resembled small beetles and could fly. In exchange for being allowed to feed off of their host’s chakra, they would follow the host’s commands. They actually lived inside the clan members, in a symbiotic relationship—according to Shino-san, his _kikaichū_ had been allowed to colonize his body soon after he was born. 

It was honestly kinda disturbing to think about insects _inside_ someone, but he seemed fine with it, and it wasn’t like someone was forcing me to host _kikaichū_ , so it really wasn’t any of my business. 

And Shino-san was good company.

He was quiet, but after we became better friends, he wasn’t that shy—or, at least, not when we were alone. When the park was more crowded, he tended to clam up until we’d reached the pond. 

Thankfully, though, as Okaa-san and Otō-san got to know Aburame Shibi-sama, Shino’s father, and vice versa, Shino-san and I began to branch out. 

The Aburame compound was also located on the southern side of the village, and at one point, Aburama-sama brought us to what I suspected was technically one of the Aburame training fields. It was mostly forest, though, with bushes and shrubs, and Shino-kun and I went hunting for _kabutomushi_ —rhinoceros beetles. It was fun, even if I got sidetracked by the pond on the grounds, and I spent more than a little while staring at the dragonflies there. 

They were so bright and colourful and fast… 

I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to fly.

I decided to spend more time on my physical exercises and practicing chakra. After all, with enough training _shinobi_ could hop from tree to tree and perform gravity-defying acrobatics. While that wasn’t quite flying, it wasn’t too far off either.

* * *

When someone jumped through my window, around sunset, my first thought was to scream. When I realized who it was, I froze.

I probably looked like an idiot to ANBU-san.

But that was the surprising part—why was _Ryōken-san_ visiting me? In my room? At sunset?

Honestly, if I didn’t know who he was, I would have been considerably more concerned. 

As it was…

“Kobayashi-kun. Last time, you mentioned that Uzumaki-kun was behind in his development. As someone of a similar age to Uzumaki-kun, what do you believe he should be able to do at his age?”

...

Yup. 

I sighed internally, staring at the ANBU.

He was _really_ bad with people. 

“You know, it would be better to ask… a medical-nin, or a parent with kids, or someone like that, right?” I sighed again, this time externally. “I can help, but please don’t tell anyone I told you—I’m not exactly an expert. But… he should be making noise. He should already know some words and know what they mean. He might make up words, but he should be able to match a sound with… whatever thing he means with that sound. He should be able to recognize some things you say to him, like his name. He should be able to walk. I’m not really sure about anything else, and _please_ get someone to double-check what I told you, but…”

I shrugged.

“Also… uh, _Ryōken-san_?” I asked, more hesitantly. “Babies… they need someone to talk to them. A _lot_. Stuff to help them walk. Encouragement. Without people around them, talking to them, pointing at things and telling them their names… without attention, and encouragement, babies won’t learn.” 

There were also other possibilities, but given what I knew of the protagonist, they probably applicable in this situation. 

No. I suspected neglect. The kid was important, given the giant, sentient, fox-shaped mass of malevolent chakra sealed into him, so unless the Hokage did someone majorly stupid and didn’t give him any bodyguards… or the bodyguards were inept and didn’t recognize physical abuse or insults… 

It was probably only neglect. 

But that could cause more than enough damage, even just on its own, especially for a baby.

I snapped out of my thoughts when a gloved hand patted me on the head.

“ _Iiko_ ,” the ANBU said, holding out a small box with his other hand, which he pushed at me.

Dumbfounded, I accepted it, watching as the ANBU promptly jumped back out the window.

I opened the box—heavy waxed paper, folded and glued in the form of a box, I noted—and looked at what was inside.

Huh. 

There was a divider, connecting two corners, and in each half were two different snacks— _arare_ and _amanattō_. One savory, one sweet.

 _Arare_ was a crunchy snack made from glutinous rice and flavored with soy sauce, a bit like a crunchy _mochi_. On the other hand, _amanattō_ was a bit more traditional—a treat made of boiled adzuki beans (the same red beans used to make _anko_ ) coated with a sugar syrup and left to dry. 

Well. I really couldn’t say anything about his interpersonal skills, but I definitely approved of _Ryōken-san_ ’s taste in treats. 

* * *

When autumn came, the dense leaf-cover on the ground meant that with some careful sleuthing, Shino-kun and I managed to find more bugs.

They weren’t nearly as pretty as the dragonflies, or even the golden orb weaver— _jorō-gumo_ —and I have to say that there were times I felt a bit discomfited by the entire thing— _gleamingexoskeletonsand_ _toomanylegs_ —but I persevered. 

The fact was, from an objective standpoint, the insects were fascinating, and I appreciated the insight into part of an ecosystem I had never given much prior thought.

Even more thankfully, Shino-kun didn’t mind that I didn’t enjoy getting as hands-on with the insects as he did—and that wasn’t just because of the insects. I was also pretty ticklish, and tiny insect legs… well.

I did enjoy grabbing a pad of paper and sketching the insects, however. My fine motor control improved, and Shino-kun enjoyed flipping through my sketches, labeling the unique identifications of the insects and adding information about their characteristics.

I was also invited over to the Aburame compound, at one point, which had been exciting and absolutely nerve-wracking. 

Not all of the Aburame lived together, but they had an area—that seemed a cross between a training ground and research facility—where many members lived, and where anyone in the clan could experiment with insects. There were a few buildings that could be seen, between the trees—primarily what looked rather like greenhouses—and deceptively small buildings that Aburame-sama told me extended further underground. 

He and Shino-kun actually took me on a small tour around parts of the clan buildings. There were lots of individual sections, like one for arachnids, one for termites, mosquitoes, dragonflies, butterflies, moths, flies (normal, house, and horse), and other rarer creatures. Apart from all insects (plus arachnids), all of the insects species houses in the building shared a common characteristic—there was something about them that the Aburame could use. Either that meant they had a characteristic the Aburame were trying to breed into their _kikaichū_ , they were a species the Aburame were studying (to determine potentially useful characteristics), or they possessed a peculiarity that somehow helped Aburame children learn to control their _kikaichū_. 

I never learned any specific details, but I was already amazed by—and very appreciative of—how much Aburame-sama had decided to share with me. 

After the tour, though, Shino-kun dragged me off to see the reason he’d invited me—some of the praying mantises were about to lay eggs.

It was pretty cool, I had to admit. 

The mother dying right afterwards, less so. But then again, such was the nature of… well… _nature_. 

* * *

When the weather got colder, my play-dates with Shino-kun moved indoors. I usually went over to the Aburame compound, bringing snacks and teas and sketchbooks. The snacks and teas weren’t just for us, either—it was pretty inconsiderate of me to always let them host me, but I was also aware that the tea shop and my home didn’t really have any interesting insect species. 

Okaa-san insisted on inviting them over at times, though—sometimes individual visits, sometimes for dinner, sometimes just for a cup of tea after Aburame-sama sent me home. 

I also made a new… friend. 

Shino-kun had an older brother—technically, cousin, but they had been raised together after his father died. Torune-san was about three years older, and he usually dressed in almost entirely black. The most striking part of his appearance was probably his mask—entirely black, was a bit like a cowl that stretched over his eyes and neck and also covered the upper part of his face. It had an opening on the top for his hair, and pale-grey circular lenses over his eyes—that actually, oddly enough, reminded me a bit of Mogusa-san’s eyes.

I wasn’t as close with him as I was with Shino-kun, but Torune-san, rather like Mogusa-san, was quiet and polite. I could tell he cared greatly for Shino-kun, and I appreciated that he extended some of that regard to me, for how happy I made Shino-kun. 

He’d actually confronted me about that—and his gentle, quiet, polite demonstration of the capabilities of his _rinkaichū_ , a venomous insect hosted by a few rare members of the Aburame clan that fed off of living cells—was objectively terrifying. 

There was no antidote against them, Torune-san had explained. They could be transferred by simply a glancing brush, and they could even get around clothing to get to the skin. And Torune-san explained very clearly that if I didn’t take Shino-kun’s friendship seriously, if I ostracized Shino-kun for no reason in the future, if I ended up hurting him emotionally through my actions… well, the reason he wasn’t allowed to go to the Academy was because of his lack of control over his _rinkaichū_. 

And if I hurt Shino-kun, his control over them might just… accidentally slip. 

… 

I had laughed. 

What else could I do? I was very aware that he probably took his threat very seriously. However…

I’d reached up, patted him over his sleeve, and promised that he didn’t have to worry, that—barring the most extenuating of circumstances—even if I ever grew distant from Shino-kun, I would still consider him a treasured childhood friend and I would always treat him with respect. And _respect_ , I’d emphasized. Not fear. 

“The Aburame clan has done much for Konohagakure,” I had shrugged, still smiling. “You’re one of the five noble clans. To fear you… well, that would be very rude, wouldn’t it?”

And Torune-san had only inclined his head slightly, before turning and walking away. But after that, whenever we met, he called me Makoto-kun. 

So I guess it worked out well enough. 

* * *

The winter this year seemed colder than usual. The snow, which usually fell lightly, seemed to pile up. Soon Okaa-san refused to let me go outside, even for my playdates with Shino-kun. Aburame-sama agreed—we could continue once the snow let up. 

It wasn’t completely outrageous—by the start of _shiwasu_ ( _jūnigatsu_ , the twelfth month), the snow had piled well past my head. 

Almost every day, there was at least one team of _genin_ clearing the streets outside.

Meanwhile, I was spending more and more time under the _kotatsu_ in the living room— a low, wooden table frame covered by a heavy _futon_ blanket, with a flat table-top weighing it down. Underneath it—in a small divot usually covered by a wooden board—sat a lit charcoal brazier.

It was also wonderfully warm.

I had started preparing presents for my friends, for the _Rinne Matsuri_ —the festival with the purple-gold decorations and bells and cheerful songs that focused on giving presents and spending time with friends and family and spreading happiness. 

It did seem rather similar to holiday traditions I’d known _Before_ , but I guess it made sense for winter—it’s cold and rather miserable and some people probably had difficulties with food or resources, so hope would logically be sought after.

The logical explanation didn’t do anything to diminish the warm, fuzzy feeling that learning about the festival gave me. 

After some thought, I decided to send my friends paintings. Earlier in the year, Okaa-san had started teaching me some calligraphy—and when I asked, she also taught me some styles of ink painting. Before the snows had become too heavy, Otō-san had given me a set of what seemed like watercolors.

They weren’t that good, not yet, but I was satisfied with them. And when I asked Okaa-san, she’d called my drawings charming. So they were probably good enough. 

For Otō-san and Okaa-san, a picture of the shop from my point of view when I stood in my crib. It had been sketched first, then colored—I wasn’t confident enough to try drawing straight lines with ink, yet. 

For _hime-san_ , a large black-and-white _koi_ fish with a few yellow scales… and a small white-and-gold _koi_ swimming beside it. The background was a pale pinkish-purple, like the clouds at sunset. It might have been a little presumptuous, but I hoped _hime-san_ would understand.

For Itachi-san, a colorful sunrise over the cliff above Konoha, painted on an _uchiwa_ fan—as a nod to his clan symbol. I wasn’t good enough to paint the Hokage faces realistically, but focusing on the sunrise meant I didn’t have to worry about them. I chose to set the scene in autumn—it was my favorite season, but more than that, the oranges and browns and reds complimented well with the bright sun. 

For Shino-kun, a log covered with a variety of insects—all of the ones he had introduced to me—with a familiar pond and spider-web in the background. 

For Yamanaka-san, bluebells for “gratitude” in _hanakotoba_ , the language of flowers. I’d asked Okaa-san when I had wondered what type of flower to draw for him, and I’d settled on bluebells. Partially because I was grateful for him—I wasn’t the closest with him, but I knew Okaa-san and Otō-san enjoyed his visits—and partially because they were an easier flower to draw. 

For Ensui-san, a caricature of a grumpy hedgehog with a few colorful _namagashi_ from all of the seasons stuck to its back. I thought the animal fitting for Ensui-san—he always seemed so grumpy and scary and prickly for someone who didn’t know him well, but he was also very good to me. Plus, I figured that he would find it funny. 

For Mogusa-san, a picture of mugwort, along with a bundle of the dried herb—it was used in certain traditional medicinal practices, and _mogusa_ could refer to mugwort, so I thought it was pretty funny. I also gave him some mint tea, though, since that seemed to be his favorite—just in case. 

* * *

This year, many of my presents hadn’t arrived, due to the heavy snows—so there was nothing from Okaa-san’s family or Otō-san’s family. 

However, I did receive presents from _hime-san_ —the recharged previous gifts, a larger, even-thicker blanket (with no swirly patterns on the blanket, but there were wooden beads knotted into it at even intervals), and an intricately-carved jade pendant on a necklace. There was a _koi_ fish on the pendant, along with what seemed like round bubbles and ginkgo leaves, and there was _so much chakra_ stored inside. 

It hung on what seemed like a thin leather cord, with two smaller jade beads framing it. When I put it on, the pendant almost dropped to my belly-button, and I’d laughed. 

It was a little big for me right now, but I rather loved that—I would be able to grow into it. 

I was really amazed by Shino-kun’s present—it was a thin pale-gold-coloured bracelet. The note accompanying it, written by Aburame-sama, told me that it had been twisted from strands of silk, spun by a golden orb weaver, and Shino had helped a lot with the production.

I absolutely adored it. 

From Itachi, I received a rather entertaining present.

Technically, it was just a piece of paper, with a message—“Keep the book.”

...

I’d laughed. And laughed. And continued laughing for so long that Otō-san actually asked if I was okay.

Ok, Itachi-san. You win this one. 

* * *

I went to sleep earlier on my birthday. Early the next morning, Okaa-san shook me awake when the sky was still dark. the air was positively _freezing_ , but Otō-san had already heated the _kotatsu_ , and so we sat around the table with the blanket draped over our lap— basking in the warmth as we watched the sky lighten.

As the sun rose on the new year, I couldn’t help but think of everything that had happened in the past year. One more year down… which meant I had two, maybe three, more to go if I was lucky. 

I’d already accomplished so much… surely I could make a difference?

* * *

In the peaceful light

Of the ever-shining sun

In the days of spring,

Why do the cherry's new-blown blooms

Scatter like restless thoughts?

— Ki no Tomonori

* * *

久方の

光のどけき

春の日に

しづ心なく

花のちるらむ

— 紀友則

* * *

_Hisakata no_

_Hikari nodokeki_

_Haru no hi ni_

_Shizu-gokoro naku_

_Hana no chiruran_

_— Ki no Tomonori_

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year! This is where I'll post most of my author's notes--which will probably be mostly consist of my research, where I got the inspiration for certain elements of worldbuilding, and so on. Or, occasionally, a plea for help to the readers.
> 
> First off, the poems--these are from the Hyakunin Isshu, a very famous historical anthology of Japanese poems. My choice in using the poems to frame the chapters is a bit of a reference to my goal of worldbuilding and my hobby of research. I also try and have the English translation of the poem vaguely fit the chapter. I sometimes edit the translated version a bit to better fit my story (for example, deleting or altering the name of a location), but I get the translations from here [http://jti.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/hyakunin/hyakua.html] and here [https://100poets.wordpress.com/index/]. There are also more poems, though not from the Hyakunin Isshu, here [http://www.wakapoetry.net/poems/anthologies/kokinshu/], which I might draw from in the future.
> 
> If you want to check them out, I encourage it! They’re really interesting.
> 
> If any readers want to guess why I chose the poem, please leave a comment below!
> 
> Apart from that... the stuff about Japanese folklore I get from Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia of Shinto here [http://eos.kokugakuin.ac.jp/modules/xwords/], or it's newer edition here [http://k-amc.kokugakuin.ac.jp/DM/dbTop.do?class_name=col_eos]. Or here [http://yokai.com/]. The rest I google. I can try to keep a better record of the sites I reference if people would prefer that?


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